Perhaps through students watching the lesson unfold intently (but then again, how can we decipher between a blank stare and an engaged gaze?). Or maybe you measure engagement through class/team/individual contributions to a lesson (but then again, perhaps some students are only participating because they are "supposed to" and is that true engagement?). In my experience, the sure fire way to measure engagement in the classroom is when students ask questions (rather than just giving answers) and when not a single student asks to leave to use the restroom. This is the type of actively engaged learning you see during a Barbie Zipline lesson.
For the past month many of our CUSD math teachers have been participating in a Voxer book club on The Classroom Chef, which the book's authors Matt Vaudrey and John Stevens have been gracious enough to join in on. In essence, the book is a guide to creating meaningful and engaging instruction in math. While all of the lessons and ideas shared in the book are awesome and worth trying, 8th grade teachers Pedro Garcia and James Peng were especially intrigued by Chapter 6 "Barbie Zipline". Of course I jumped at the opportunity to support this fabulous lesson!
We used the lesson plan from John's blog post as a starting point, and pulled all that we needed to launch the adventure (oops, I mean lesson) into a Google Slides presentation.
The objectives were:
Determine the length of line required to complete a right triangle using the Pythagorean Theorem
Calculate average speed to determine the safest, yet most fun, parameters for a Barbie Zipline given the data compiled during the activity
Prior to the lesson, students figured out the length of string needed for their trials. During the lesson, they actively engaged in recording Barbie's (or Woody's) time in order to use this with his distance to figure out his speed. Below are a couple of the trials!
Woody's safe & fun journey:
The (last) ride of Woody's life:
Want some more zipline fun? Check out this Desmos model created by our very own James Peng!
Last weekend I had the privilege of joining a group of truly innovative thinkers in mathematics at the first ever #CUErockstar Math Edition.
In my first year as a math/tech coach, it was a surreal experience to take the stage and shred alongside some of the most prominent figures in the movement to transform math instruction. John Stevens, Ed Campos, Fawn Nguyen, Michael Fenton, and Matt Vaudrey all spread a message that math can be highly engaging (even intriguing and exciting) and that all students can develop a positive identity as a learner of mathematics. This is a message that drives me in my daily work, and it was a true privilege to get to share the vision with innovative teachers from all over California.
At the event, several teachers approached me feeling torn on which sessions to attend since they were intrigued by my content, but also that of the other presenters. Since I would never steer anyone from the opportunity to see my math gurus in action, I made a promise to do some screencasting and share my resources after the event, so here you go!
Session 1: Google Classroom in Math
In this session, we addressed the reasons that many teachers are hesitant to use Google Classroom in math, and then looked at math specific lessons within Google Classroom.
Here is a screencast overview of the ideas shared in the session. Participants were able to experience Google Classroom as students and then brainstorm how this might look in their own classrooms. The slides for this session can be found at bit.ly/rockstarclassroom. These slides contain links to the lessons/resources that we accessed while taking our journey through Google Classroom.
Session 2: Blended Learning in Math
My session on the second day focused on how to incorporate tools that support different types of blended learning into mathematics instruction in a way that supports choice and individualized instruction. Here are the slides with a few ideas for blending it up! During the session, we experienced several different tools that support blended learning together, then participants visited choice stations where they could go deeper with the tools they wanted to learn more about. These slides can also be found at bit.ly/rockstarblended .
Highlight of the Blended Learning session: Seeing my participants so actively engaged in applying the tools in ways that were meaningful to them that at one point they pretty much forgot I was in the room. So naturally, I walked around taking selfies.
Some other highlights: 1. Having 7 teachers from my district in attendance and ready to rock the new tools strategies!
2. Seeing the tools I shared at my sessions be put into action in the classroom immediately!
