curriculum

Geometry Planning Guide

Lisa Bejarano Geometry Planning Guide , , , ,

Click here to access and comment on the Geometry Planning guide

Units:

  1. Constructions
  2. Congruence
  3. Transformations & Similarity
  4. Right triangles & Coordinate Proof
  5. Applied Trigonometry & Solids
  6. Circles

In the spirit of Geoff Krall’s Problem Based Curriculum Maps, I attempted to organize my geometry curriculum and learning targets along with associated activities, tasks & lessons. In order to keep this as a useful document, I tried to only include the tasks that I have actually used in my geometry classes. I am interested in adding & deleting from this document regularly to keep if useful for me (and hopefully others). I plan to have the second semester completed this summer, as I am trying to develop this as I go this school year. 

[update 7/25/16: It is finally completed!]

I have shamelessly stolen from all over the MTBoS, Math Vision Project, Engage NY & the Unit Blueprints Project and tried to give credit as much as possible.

Please share any criticisms, activities that I should add, activities that are misaligned, etc… in the comments.

Jumping in

Lisa Bejarano Intro to Programming , , , ,

It is our Holiday break & I should be planning for the Intro to Computer Programming class that I’ll be teaching starting in 2 weeks. Problem is, I don’t really know how to code. I can write simple programs in a TI-84, and I wrote some C++ & Matlab programs back in college.

I think programming is important & I teach in a very small alternative high school (about 100 students). I have supportive administration. I noticed a significant proportion of students who expressed interest in programming, especially after completing the Hour of Code. Being an alternative school, there are a lot of students who need additional math credits in addition to students who need elective credits & I want them to choose math! Last semester I taught Financial Literacy, which supplies beneficial life skills, but I can’t teach it twice since students need a variety of math elective options. So, programming it is! I asked for it & I got it. IT filled to capacity within a week of scheduling next semester.

So here its what I’m currently thinking about the structure of the class:

The class meets for 90 minutes Tuesdays, Thursdays & every other Friday.

  • I’m going to be heavily dependent on CodeHS’s curriculum. At least this first time. I’m not going to drive myself crazy developing everything from scratch. This is effective when I know what I am doing, but I don’t. I’ll gradually develop this class as I learn more about Javascript & HTML.
  • Since this is for a math credit, I’m going to start every class using Fawn’s Math talks. If I plan to learn a lot by teaching this class, why not try something new for warm-ups too?
  • Since this class will be largely student paced, I need a way to hold them accountable and to stay motivated. I am going to create a student form for daily reflection in the last 5 minutes of each class. This will include: What they learned today, Where they struggled, if they helped or got help form any peers, what activities they completed, room for their comments, and room for a reply from me. I’ll post it here when I make it. hopefully that will be soon.
  • I wish I could think of a fair way to encourage collaboration, but I haven’t been able to figure that out. Maybe we will have discussion time on the every other Fridays where students present where they are stuck and we work together to fix it?
  • I plan to do a hybrid standards based grading (SBG):
  1. 50% of their grade being the standards: all of the programming skills students should demonstrate: for loops, indentation, commenting, while loops, if/else loops, debugging….
  2. 30% Successful Completion of the Challenge projects within each CodeHS unit – I am considering a grading scale where students can choose their grade based on how many of the projects they complete. I don’t know. I may just assign all of the challenge projects because this is their chance to use the 8 Standard of Mathematical Practice and what is cooler than that?!
  3. 20% successful completion of the learning activities.

This all may change as I work through it with students & I’d really like to make more of it my own. I can;t remember the last time I was so dependent on a pre-designed curriculum. I get a little nauseous thinking about it!

[update 1/7 I made a progress log. I’m not sure what I’m missing, so Im only going to make copies for 1 or two weeks, and then I’ll see how they are used & what I should change ]

Day 4: Planning for the first day

Lisa Bejarano 180 Days of Geometry 13-14, Geometry , , ,

For some reason, I am much less concerned about the first day this school year. Maybe its because i’m more confident in my teaching. Maybe its because I know I just need to get students working and listen to them to learn who they are and what they need before I plan too much. Maybe I just a little burned out. regardless, on the first day with kids (Monday) I get 1 hour with my puma period (homeroom) and 15 minutes with each of my other classes. So I’m going to do the spaghetti tower with my Puma period so that I can get to know this group and get them thinking & team building. For the other classes, 15 minutes is hard…too long & too short. I considered doing 4 4’s but I want to force students to talk to each other. I’m going with Dan Meyer’s personality coordinates, this way I can make them think a little, talk to each other & maybe do a “ticket out” to see what questions they have for me. I plan to and write them responses so that they feel welcomed in my class. Since the max class size is 15, this shouldn’t take too long. I also finished making curriculum maps and my pathetic attempt at my 1st unit UbD’s for both Geometry & Consumer Math. This weekend I need to plan the first part of their INB’s.