Barbie Zipline

How do you measure engagement in the classroom? 

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!