Thursday, May 5, 2016

Ouch!

I've thrown my back out. Again. Might have something to do with the enormous amount of personal-life stress, coupled with trying to teach 85 angsty teens 3 weeks from the end of school.

Anyway, it hurts to walk. So I had to come up with a way to teach from behind my desk today. So I uploaded some old powerpoints of today's notes to NearPod, checked out the school's iPad mini cart, and voila! Quick, easy way to make a lesson interactive. They liked having the notes sitting on their desk. I heard lots less whining about not being able to see.  I will definitely have to do this more often (and not just on days when it hurts to walk)!

Next, we did a page on Central Angles and Arcs. Not the most exciting page, but I think it got the job done. And the kids LOVED being able to try the examples and get immediate, individualized feedback on their work. It also let them make mistakes safely. A wrong answer is often the best teaching tool. "Nope, that's wrong. Here's why." A few even got ruffled because I didn't specifically call them by name when they got it right. Sorry, kid! We were running out of time!

Here's a sample Wrong Answer. Nearpod will let you share one students work onto all devices (without showing the student's name). I showed them this one and we talked about how arcs have to be named using their endpoints as the first and last letter, and how a middle letter is only required when the arc goes the long-way-round (major arc). If there is a point on a minor arc, its letter doesn't have to be included. Arc LP is only part of the intercepted arc, so this answer was incorrect. 

Here's a correct answer. I showed them this one and we talked about how we could write a lazier answer by leaving out the unnecessary P. 

By number 3, most of them had it down but there were still issues of wrong thinking we could address. I told this student they were on the right track, but they subtracted from the wrong "total" number. Subtracting from 180 in a geometry problem has better-than-even odds of getting the right answer, but not this time. 


Still have no idea what this kid was thinking. 

Subtraction mistakes. Still a struggle in high school. He had the right idea though.