The Mother of All Scavenger Hunts

I was inspired by Cindy’s QR Code Scavenger Hunt ever since I first read it and realized I could use the iPads that I didn’t know what to do with. I really liked her idea of having the QR codes output plain text, but I quickly realized that this wouldn’t work for a geometry activity.

I finally decided to do this as a final pre-STAAR review activity that would get us out of the classroom, and would let us review without using a packet of worksheets. I apparently also lost my sanity and decided that I wanted to have each answer choice be a separate location with its own URL (and I wanted to have 15 questions). Since everything was going to be done through the QR codes and a spare WordPress site, that’s 15×5=75 separate QR codes and blog entries. **sigh**

The next step in my madness was the inspiration of using locker numbers to handle the 75! locations I needed. This meant I had to wander around the whole school figuring out which locker numbers were where. Once I thought of the lockers, I thought it would be cool if, on the locker with the correct answer, the students could open the locker and find a token to bring back. Time to contact the assistant principal in charge of the lockers to find out combinations to 15 lockers. She ended up just letting me borrow the notebook — yay!

Now the work began. I actually used the random number generator on my TI-84 to randomize locker locations (I assigned each main block of lockers a number), and then created a spreadsheet for the question and answer choices locker numbers. I used my trial version of Kuta to create the 15 questions. I then scanned the document (since it won’t let you save as a PDF on the trial version) and then created blog entries for each question, incorrect answer, and correct answer (including the combination to the locker). This gave me URLs that I could paste into the QR generator, which I then copied and pasted into a Word document (one page per question).

The afternoon before the hunt, I went around the building with my QR codes and my tokens. Copying Cindy, I also made Hall Passes for each of my students, as well as worksheets for them to use to show their work (no credit for the token without the work).

How did it go?

Good things:

• The kids got into the idea of the scavenger hunt, and once they figured out the locker thing, they all worked pretty well (I put them in teams of two).
• My codes created a lot of buzz around the school. I had at least three non-math teachers come up to me and ask me about my scavenger hunt — they had scanned the QR codes and saw my name.
• I was especially pleased that my principal found a group that was working on a problem, and they told him that they really liked the activity.
• Considering I had 75 codes around a building with 2800 students wandering around, I only found 4 codes that were torn down. Even more important, none of the lockers with tokens were messed with.
• It was also useful for my students (who are all sophomores) to see parts of the building they may not have seen before, since I used every bank of lockers in the school.
• Students could use their phones as well as the iPads, which made a nice division of labor.

Not-so-good things:

• Out of the 15 problems I created, the most any team completed was 5. I think next year, assuming I do this again, I will group the questions and answers closer together so students have time to answer more questions. In principle, it makes sense to spread things out so students are less likely to just scan codes, but as big as our school is, it just may not be practical.



• I had to double-check all of the codes on the second day because of other students’ messing with my codes. Yes, it was only 4, but I still had to check all 75.
• I had forgotten until the morning of the hunt, but one of my girls had torn ligaments in her knee. Oops! She managed to make about half of the problems, but then she had to sit down.
• Teenager drama — “I don’t want to work with her any more; she’s a b****!”
• I was exhausted! One evening running around the school preparing things, two days running around the school monitoring students, and then going around taking down all of the codes and retrieving all of the tokens.

Overall, however, the good things definitely outweighed the bad. I think that now that I have the process in place, I will probably do this again next year.

Geometry Plans for Next Year

I have the stereotypical reason for not having blogged anything since November: lack of time. I have been the level leader for Geometry this year, and that has eaten into my time more that I thought it would. I’ve also had some personal stuff such as having one best friend not wake up one morning and my other best friend had her first baby.

The other reason that I haven’t blogged is that the only thing I’ve been interested in blogging about is the class that I am almost definitely going to be teaching next year. I haven’t written about it out of a kind of “jinx” mentality, but since it seems almost certain, I’m going to start putting some stuff down.

I proposed to my department leader and my principal that we restructure our Pre-AP Geometry class around the Exeter Math 2 curriculum. They really liked the idea, but they weren’t sure that they wanted me to stop teaching regular students. Since then, we have decided to create a 9th grade center in our school next year, and I have been approved to teach PAP Geometry and regular 9th grade Geometry.

So, here’s my plan:

• As much as I love the Exeter problem sets, it might be a little too rich for students used to a traditional curriculum. In order to prevent a mutiny by students (or their parents), my plan is to do a modified “flip” of the classroom.
• Students will copy down the basic notes for the lesson (definitions, theorems, etc.) and do some very basic skill practice for homework. I may use Khan videos for reinforcement if applicable.
• During class, students will work on the Exeter problems in groups. I plan to use whiteboarding, jigsawing, and mixing up groups to keep things fresh.
• Thanks to Sam Shah, I also found out about The Park School of Baltimore, which will send you their curriculum if you ask. It’s got some great “Habits of Mind” material for practicing problem solving. I can use this to vary things up a bit with the Exeter material.
• We’re on a block schedule, so I only see the students every other day. I think on the weeks that I see them three days, I will give a quiz or practice constructions or something more concrete.

Problems I forsee:

• Selling this to students. This is something new, and students often resist new things. It’s also going to be frustrating for them as I plan to be “less helpful” (^tmDan Meyer). I plan to structure the grades such that the problem sets will be important, but will not have the potential to kill their grades as long as they honestly attempt them.
• Selling this to parents. Again, this is something new. I plan to emphasize how important these skills are for college, how it won’t sabotage their child’s grades, and that even though the students complain that “she never helps me,” that it is by design.
• A subset of this problem is that the other PAP Geometry teacher is going to be teaching a regular curriculum. I want to be sure that parents’ concerns are satisfied enough that they don’t try to put pressure to either make me stop or to have their child put into the other teacher’s class.
• Keeping my administrators in the loop. They are really trusting me to make this experiment, and I want to keep them honestly informed on how well or poorly the classes are doing. I told them at the outset that one of the reasons I wanted to try this with PAP Geometry is that it is not a prerequisite for anything else in the math curriculum–if I screw up, it shouldn’t affect them too much down the road. Obviously, all of us would like this to be successful, though.

I’m working through the problem sets right now, but obviously, I can’t wait for Twitter Math Camp in July!

A Day in the Life

6:00 – Alarm goes off; set snooze timer for 7 minutes.
6:07 – Snooze timer goes off; reset for 7 minutes.
6:14 – Snooze timer goes off; turn on the radio; decide to get out of bed. Shower, get dressed.
7:00 – Head out the door
7:20 – Arrive at school. Realize that while I remembered to bring a new box of kleenex and my lunch, I forgot to bring the bag that held a check I wanted to deposit using my scanner and some paperwork I need to fill out for a friend. (Which wouldn’t be so bad if I hadn’t forgotten to do anything with the paperwork since Friday. **sigh**)
7:35 – 1st period begins. This is my conference period, and I want to make sure that the quizzes I made last night will actually work. A friend and I learned about the coolest thing on Saturday: GradeCam, an online program that lets you print out your own scantrons and scan them using a document camera. Very slick. Unfortunately, my scanner is having problems this morning, and it takes me until almost 9:00 to get them straightened out. I realize that I don’t have time to go by my inbox, so I ask the AP’s attendance clerk if one of her office minions can pick my stuff up during 2nd period.
9:13 – 2nd period, which is Geometry, begins. I decide to have some fun and have them do order of operations practice without a calculator as a warm-up. They whine as expected, but they eventually do it. Then they take the test with the new scantrons. After a couple of glitches, we get it worked out. After the quiz, I give them some notes on coordinate proofs, which is a section I’ve never taught before. A little awkward, but I think it worked out. The office minion brought my copies by in time, so I pass out the worksheets as homework.
10:42 – During the passing period, I talk with M, my friend who is also using the GradeCam quizzes. She actually lets her students scan their own quizzes, but her doc camera is playing a little nicer than mine is. Darn.
10:49 – 3rd period, also Geometry, begins. They are doing the same thing as 2nd period. I like my notes a little better though, because I actually brought in proving two triangles congruent by showing that the lengths of their sides were the same using the distance formula.
12:19 – Lunch! I heat up my lunch in the microwave, and as I walk back to my room, I see my department leader. I had asked him earlier if I could borrow an iPad to work with it before I try to do anything with them in class, so he checks one out to me. I take it and my lunch and go to S’s room to chat and eat. I gush about how much I like the GradeCam stuff.
1:15 – 4th period, Algebra 3, begins. We are starting a unit on exponential and logarithmic functions, so I remind them about the properties of exponents (which they seem to have never heard of before — yay), and we practice solving equations that have the same base. I also introduce/remind them about compound interest, and we practice solving some problems using the nSpires. We finish up with about 15 minutes to spare, so I assign them about 5 problems for classwork. I think just about everyone finished before the bell rang.
2:45 – I am the UIL Calculator coach, and M is the Number Sense and Math coach. We just went to a meet on Saturday, so all we do today during our practice time is hand back the tests from Saturday.
3:30 – M and I start talking about numbers in other bases. I had finally remembered to bring my notes from my Discrete class I took for my master’s degree. The UIL Math test usually contains some non-10-based problems, and M wanted me to help her refamiliarize herself with them. We started off doing addition and subtraction, and then we moved on to multiplication and division. We really had fun, however, when we were trying to figure out a procedure for solving a type of mixed-base addition problem that often occurs on the test. For example, . Once we deduced a possible algorithm, we had to do a couple more problems to make sure we had it right. Very fun stuff — we were both giggling with how pleased we were that we figured it out.
5:30 – Clear off some of the papers on my desk and decide to head for home.
6:00 – After stopping by Walmart to pick up some soup for lunch tomorrow, I remember that I was supposed to meet the heater service people for my semi-annual inspection and service. Oops.
6:30 – I call them when I get home to reschedule. After eating some peanut butter for dinner, I type out this schedule. Whew!

My Favorite Friday

I know I’ve been MIA recently, but I wanted to take a moment to share one of the best ideas I’ve had this year. Whenever I pass back a quiz, I also pass back a copy of my quiz key. I have told them that they can use previous quizzes as notes when they retake (yay, SBG!), so it’s in their interest to compare their quizzes to the key to see what they did wrong and make corrections. It’s so cool not to see quizzes being immediately thrown away as soon as I pass them out! This also saves me time because I don’t bother marking corrections on their quizzes unless I think it might be too hard for them to spot the mistake.

My upperclassmen have totally figured out this system, and they will spend 10-20 minutes carefully going over their quizzes. The sophomores aren’t quite that sharp, and not all of them take the time to do corrections. I definitely see more doing corrections than not, however.

I copy my quiz keys on Astrobright paper so I can retrieve them each period.

Math Hospital

Reblogged from Irrational Cube:

It looks like it's that time of year.  It seems like all I seem to hear about is test prep.  Sometimes I wonder how my kids don't explode from the testing that we put them through.  But I am not here to talk about my thoughts on testing - just how I cope with the constant internal and external forces pushing me in all directions.

Read more… 243 more words

Cool idea!

Cool Midpoint and Distance Idea

via Lisa:

The Radical Rational had an idea to put a grid on top of a map of her school. The questions she proposed asking her students:

•Calculate the distance between Room 137 & Room 114.
•Find the coordinates between Room 137 & Room 114. What room are you closet to at this point?
•Connect Ag, Kitchen, Cafeteria & Workshop. What type of quadrilateral have your formed? How do you know? Prove it. We have not covered types quads – but they can use their BYOD to find this information if needed, right?
•Connect Library, Room 128, Room 116 and Room 114. Is it a rectangle? Or a square? (LOL) How do you know. This always comes up in discussion – I must say I love the “disagreements”.
•Connect Room 145, Room 142 and Band. What type of Triangle have you created? How do you know? Prove it.
•Connect the Gym, Library and Tan Hall – Find the perimeter & area of this triangle.
•What about having them “map” out their schedule and calculate “as the crow flies” distances between their destinations.

Reflections – Geometry Obj. 3 and 4, Algebra 3 Obj. 3

Okay, I’m now 2 for 4 (I think) for writing reflections on B-day, and 0 for 4 writing them during 8th period. **sigh**

Geometry Obj. 3
I adore my Point, Lines, and Planes foldable! It made one of my most-dreaded sections into something not quite so painful. When I figured out I was only going to have about half a period to do Points, Lines, and Planes, I knew I had to do something to the way I had always done it (traditional notes), so I figured out how to rearrange things so that they would work as a foldable. After talking it over with S (yay! she’s back at my school!), I got my layout finalized. Then, it was a matter of fussing with the details. I think the thing that I especially like about this foldable are the marks I put on the side to show where the fold should go. I wish I’d thought of that before!

I started off the class with a warm-up going over conditional and biconditional statements (writing the converse, inverse, and contrapositive), and then I went over the homework, which was pretty much the same thing. Then we had our first quiz, and then we did the foldable.

Geometry Obj. 4
Okay, I had dreams of doing Constructing Segments and Constructing Angles in one day. Not so much.

I had an idea the other day, so I thought I’d try it out: when I handed back the quiz, I also handed out copies of my key. Their warm-up was to make quiz corrections, and to see if they could figure out where they went wrong. This worked really well! For one thing, it encouraged students to actually look at the quiz, instead of just looking at the grade and then throwing it away. Also, I informed/reminded them that since I let them use their notes on quizzes, if they corrected this quiz, it then became “notes” that they could use on future quizzes. Incentive!

Since I had been giving them holey notes, I decided it was time for them to take some actual notes. So for this lesson, they did a mathy version of Cornell notes. I also introduced construction (and gave my “Sharp Pointy Object Speech” as I handed out compasses) and we practiced constructing congruent segments and midpoints. One of my favorite parts occurred because I realized I had a little bit of time left (but not enough to start Constructing Angles), so we did a Kagan activity, “Draw What I Say”. In a group of students, one student drew a card that had a description of a figure (ex. “Point is the midpoint of “). The student would read the card to the other member(s) of the group who would then try to draw it based on his description. The card has a diagram of what the picture should look like, so the reading student knows what to look for. Very cool activity.

Algebra 3 Obj. 1-2 Quiz
As I think will become my habit, I made copies of my solutions on bright pink paper for them to check their homework, and I then went over any additional questions they had. The main questions, somewhat distressingly, centered around converting from standard form to slope-intercept form and writing the equation of a line. They took the quiz, and I handed out the first problem set.

Algebra 3 Obj. 3
As I did with Geometry (and for the same reasons), when I handed back their quizzes, I also handed back a copy of my key. They also caught on to the incentive nature of making corrections.

Next we went over quadratic equations. This actually went fairly well in both classes. I “reviewed” how to reduce radicals, how to factor a quadratic expression, how to use the quadratic formula, and how to factor a sum or difference of cubes. In both classes, students said, “Oh, that’s how you do that!” so I’m somewhat hopeful.

I may not have written about these lessons when I first planned to, but at least I’m caught up now. Maybe by Monday (my next B-day), I’ll have things a little better in hand.