My Portfolio!

      

      Within this blog post I am going to create a personal portfolio for my math classroom. I personally believe the categories or activities listed below are useful in every lesson, but have also made direct connections to curriculum and assessment strategies. I think all of these activities will increase engagement in the class and will allow for a more enjoyable learning environment for everyone. 

          Desmos

      I was first exposed to the Desmos online tools during a tutoring session where the student that I was tutoring was using it as an online calculator.  This course expanded on this usage and introduced me to a wide variety of games, activities, features and purposes. I was impressed by the functionality, availability and ease of use of all aspects of the Desmos software. I decided to include this software in my portfolio since I can see myself utilizing a variety of the activities in my future classroom. The activity that I will focus on for this portfolio is called marble slides. This activity can be utilized in a variety of courses but is most applicable to the grade nine and ten academic and applied courses. The activity offers a linear version as well as a quadratic option, allowing students to engage in the same activity over the course of their progression from linear to quadratic relations. The activity directly addresses the curriculum expectations that state, “By the end of this course students will be able to understand the characteristics of a linear relation” or  “relate transformations of the graph of y = x2 to the algebraic representation y=a(x–h)2 +k”. Both of these expectations can be met using version of the game marble slides in class. Classroom participation will allow the instructor to complete a checklist of student participation as well. This activity would serve as an assessment for learning as it would provide the teacher with a baseline of student knowledge. I would use this activity in partnership with another type of technology such as the smart board or computer so that students can directly interact with and explore the activity.

 Smart Technology (or similar devices) 

        As mentioned above, I would like to utilize a variety of technologies in my future classroom. In the past I have mentioned that I was going to take a Smart Technologies workshop and was excited to combine this knowledge with other mathematical activities. I now believe that Desmos and Smart technologies are one of the best combinations of technology in the classroom. Utilizing the interaction of the Smart Board with other software’s such as Desmos will allow me to influence student participation and enjoyment. Another example of this interaction was brought up at the Math Conference. We all physically participated in “the game of frogs”, where we were physically trading chairs and trying to solve the puzzle. We then continued this game on the Smart Board, utilizing tiles as people changing chairs. This allowed the entire class to participate and ensured that everyone was engaged in learning, rather than being a piece in the puzzle. I feel as though this could be accomplished for a variety of other mathematical activities as well. In saying this, even though the Smart Board itself may not have accomplished a specific expectation, it allowed for a larger variety of students to be impacted by the lesson. This game of frogs allowed students to “apply data-management techniques in order to investigate relationships between two variables”, but without the Smart Board was limited in application. The use of technology allowed more of the process expectations to be addressed including reasoning and proving for all students, communicating, and connecting the patterns between each level. Lastly, this game could be used in a formative assessment setting to ensure students are comfortable connect the patterns involved in first differences or second differences, before moving on to creating an equation for similar problems.

Fun

       This game of frogs connects to my next item in my portfolio, the use of games in the classroom. I have mentioned many of them in my blog already, but I was extremely impressed with me peers use of games in their lessons. One of my favorites was the use of a speed dating game. We were all given either a slope or a y-intercept and then set up in two circles, an inner and outside set. We then combined our equation pieces in order to find out weather or not were ‘matched’. This game can be utilized as an assessment as learning as students will assist one another in making connections. As an instructor there are a variety of things I could ‘look for’ during their participation. These include the pattern that should be represented on their graph, the unique conversation between each pair and the number of ‘matches’ that each student has found. They will communicate with one another and collaborate to create a line from their equation. This will allow students to better understand the characteristics of a linear relation and will ensure that they can visualize various representations of these relations, and communicate the differences based on graphical representation or equations.

 Popular Culture

        Lastly, this notion of games in the classroom can also be connected to the presence of popular culture in the classroom. A variety of games that can be used in the classroom are games that students will already know. Examples of this from class include the battleship activity, the ice bucket challenge as well as the deal or no deal activity that I talked about in a previous blog. The deal of no deal activity was something that students could relate to, as many of them have seen the game show and already understand the rules. This activity would be useful when looking at probability and determining theoretical probability. It will allow students to problem solve when making a decision about which case to open, and communicate their decision based on the theoretic probability. This game could be used as an assessment of learning in a conversation or interview setting. It would be unique to play a game with each student and converse with them about why they are making each decision. This conversation would bring out more of the student’s reasoning and allow them to make connections between their decisions. In general, these games would foster enjoyment and allow the students to make connections to their knowledge outside of the math classroom. They can apply these skills outside of the typical math drills and utilizing games like this will allow them to understand the connections and similarities.