#TMC15 Swan Style Task Factory

Swan Style Task Factory Maker Faire
Elizabeth Stratmore

Saturday 2:45-3:45
TMC15
Claremont, CA

The Shell Center has some great resources but it is a finite project. We can use textbooks, the Internet, and other resources to build our tasks to fit the needs of our classrooms. Swan's tasks can be broken down into 5 types.

5 Task Types

1. Card Sort
- getting students to notice and name properties

2. Matching (multiple representations)
-getting students to interpret and make connections rather than calculate

3. Always / Sometimes / Never
-getting students to generalize principles or properties

4. Create a new problem, trade, and solve
-getting students to think forward and backwards

5. Analyzing reasoning pathways
-getting students to generalize about pathways

*Each of the five have different collaboration goals.

Then we practiced by doing a card sort.

Here's my pretty poster!

And then here's the actual answer key.

And some resources:

If you only read one article on Swan's design principles, read this first one:

Malcolm Swan Design Principles.pdf

These two have additional information valuable information in getting started:

Collaborative Learning in Mathematics.pdf

Burkhardt Swan on Task Design Novice Apprentice Expert.pdf

#TMC15 Math From The Heart, Not The Textbook

Math from the heart, not the textbook
Christopher Danielson

Friday Keynote
TMC15
Claremont, CA

Find what you love. Do more of that. What do you love? How can you incorporate more of that in what you do? Not the first thing that comes to mind. What is the underlying principle that speaks to your mathematical soul, to your teacher's heart?

For Christopher, it's ambiguity.

Which One Doesn't Belong?

Kids notice corners and points before sides. They notice how shapes are built. The top right picture is the only one that can't be built from the top left triangle. Doing these activities brings out vocabulary, composing and decomposing shapes, and orientation.

Using spirals as shapes, we don't have vocabulary for the properties. We decide on what's important and then name it.

Kids notice things we don't and name it with the vocabulary they have. Zero belong because they can't be colored in (not closed polygons).

Top left doesn't belong because if it rained, it's the only the shape that would hold water.

Top right doesn't belong because both ends are not facing the same direction.

The bottom two look roughly the same length. Kids debate that the bottom right has further space from the end to the inner so it should be longer.

On this picture, there is debate about number of corners or vertices. Does the top left  have one or two? Does the top right have two or three? Does the bottom right have zero or eight?

 How far can the parabola tilt and still be a function?

Decide what you love and then explore it!

What's your niche?

Two Nice Things: A Gift!

I've talked about my two nice things rule before and mostly because it's the one thing I've been consistent on throughout my entire teaching career.

When someone says a rude or mean comment about someone (whether they are in the room or not, or a family member, or celebrity, or someone I've never heard of) they must immediately say two nice things about that same person.

It's not about the nice things really being meaningful but it's about being consistent and sending a reminder that words matter. Mostly it stops them from saying mean things because they don't actually want to say the nice things.

I wanted to do something fun for my students for the end of the year but 90 students is a lot to buy candy or food for. So I used what I had: paper, ink, and my brain.

I made a list of every student in the class. I gave a little speech first about raising their maturity level, being kind and thoughtful, and imagining their classmates find this in 10 years so that it would leave a positive feeling. I asked them to write two nice things about each person in the room except for themselves.

I took their papers and used Wordle (currently using wordart.com) to type in all the responses. Then I copied into basically the size of a book mark so I could fit four per page.

I also put their names on it but of course I'm not posting those here. Not going to lie, this took a while. I did this for all 90 students and it probably took about...3 minutes for each one. I actually ran out of time so some were on paper, some were on card stock, some were laminated, some were not. But the appreciation was the same.

The students LOVED them and they traded with others to read theirs and just stood around in clumps trying to guess who said what about them. Some of my favorite comments from the students were:

• I'm going to keep this forever!
• This is my self-esteem boost for the week.
• This makes me feel really good about myself!

I also always do class awards where I make certificates for every single student in the class. They are usually in the form of 'Most Likely To...' and then I say things that they normally do. They aren't academic at all.

Apparently, the students were really impressed that I knew them so well. I guess they didn't realize that we just spent 180 days together. =) They told other teachers about it and talked about it at lunch. They decided they wouldn't have done that if they were teachers and that I am really observant.

It's one of my favorite things to do and I always have students tell me they are going to frame it or it's the first time they've ever won anything. This year I even had former students quote theirs to me from past years.

I also made a 'video' out of funny teacher and student memes. It has my name in it so you probably don't want to use it, but here it is in case you need some ideas.

And last, I used this mad lib style survey to get my students thoughts on me and my class.



Always a good time.

Positive Polly

My sixth and weirdest year of teaching is almost over (20 more days!) and I need to remind myself of anything positive that I can.

• This week we exited two different students from special education services because they are doing so well. Hooray!
• The ASSET scores (entrance exam for our local community college) for my sophomores (majority in geometry, a handful in Algebra II) were higher than they've ever been with a large amount meeting or exceeding for college readiness. Hooray!
• The year is almost over and I did not give up on Interactive Notebooks in every class, even my newest prep. Hooray!
• Speaking of  my newest prep, I'm teaching trig and I didn't die! Hooray!
• We are creating a senior math class because of student demand; the current option is a computer course and students wanted better. Hooray!
• I stuck with Talking Points as a bell ringer even though it went poorly at first and some students actually like it. I'm not doing it correctly but I am consistent! Hooray!

Triangle Congruence Proofs Part II

Last year about this time, I wrote part I of this post. And last year was my best experience with proofs yet.

Until this year!

I ended the last unit with labeling congruent parts on purpose because I've found that the hardest part for students is realizing that when the given says something is bisected or is a midpoint that they don't realize they have to literally write which parts are congruent.

Then I started this unit with writing congruence statements, another skill students struggle with. I mentioned some of those in the original post.

But this year I replaced my straw activity with Kate Nowak's construction paper version.

I changed some of the degrees to match the angle guide I already had and modified the handout.






But I really want you to read her post about it so I will just show you my end result.

One of the triangle combinations is impossible and a student of mine was really frustrated with this, even after I confirmed it was impossible. I liked that this activity gave them a choice which showed the triangles will not always be congruent. This was easier than using straws because after drawing, students had to go back and trace them and then we stacked them on transparencies. I liked this method better. In my class of 11, I had them work alone. In my class of 16, they worked in partners.

I followed up with the same worksheets mentioned in my original post.

More to come on proofs!