Where is Space Camp Taking Me?

           Space camp was such an amazing experience....one that I know will never be duplicated.  I can (and have) gone on and on about all of the awesome experiences I had at Space Camp, but as amazing as it was, I have to come back and make changes that my students can see for it to make a difference for anyone but me.  It can't just be a cool experience that I recount for them.  In some way I have to find my own way to bring that excitement to my math classroom.  

     Obviously this is not something that is accomplished overnight.  Almost three weeks into school, I want to pause and take a minute to think...how am I bringing Space Camp back to my classroom?  From day one, I have definitely shared my excitement with kids.....telling them about it, showing them pictures. 

 I wore my flight suit and talked about my newfound passion for space.  I showed them a video clip of Kennedy, talking about the going to the moon, "not because it is easy, but because it is hard".  We talked about setting goals worthy of being hard, and we've talked about where the US space program is now.

      But what else.....because that is not enough. I came away from Space Camp realizing I needed to help my kids see all the cool pathways that math and science could open up for them, rather than just teaching them math and hoping the inspiration comes from somewhere else.  

        So for the first time, I collaborated with the science teacher on my team to do a STEM challenge.  Last week, kids built pipe cleaner towers in science, and recorded the height. This week, kids repeated this activity in my class and recorded their tower height from science versus the second attempt in my class.  It took all of 20 minutes, and next week I have real data that the kids collected and that they care about available to use to talk about measures of center and measures of variability.

Kids hard at work.

Love this pic....shows that big smile while working!

   

We are also going to talk about percent change as we compare their trials.  For just 20 minutes of fun (and problem solving and collaboration), I have a great intro to teach all this stuff I needed to teach anyways.  Plus, I hope that activities like this will help bring in some of my kids that don't love math and don't think they're good at math....maybe things like this will crack the door open for a few students to find some enjoyment in math and science, that didn't have that before.  Because my winning groups weren't necessarily the kids that usually excel in math...but yesterday they did.  And they had fun at the same time!    If you're interested in the lesson plan for this from my store, click here.

This simple design was one of the tallest towers, at 53 cm.  The winning tower was 53.5 cm.

         This  STEM challenge is also a good time to introduce the kids to the new "teams" they will be working with for the rest of the quarter.  Instead of table 1,  table 2, and so on, I now have teams Harmony, Unity, Tranquility, Kibo, Zarya,and Columbus (Space Camp team names, after parts of the International Space Station).  One of the ambassadors at camp gave us this idea....make teams that cross over hours to build up the idea of teamwork.    Teams collected points for how their team placed in our pipe cleaner challenge. Who knows.....maybe there will even be a Commander's Cup to award the winning team (this is the award my team, team Columbus, won at camp).    

    

Team Columbus, with our Commander's Cup patches!

      Another awesome thing is that after doing this STEM challenge together, the science teacher and I already have several more things planned together.....investigating claims on GrowBeasts and Double Stuff Oreos, planning a Martian Day as our team day for the last day before winter break.  Plus more collaborative STEM challenges for us in future quarters!  I can't tell you how excited I am about all of these things, and I just know the kids will love it too!

     So this is where Space Camp has taken me so far, with high hopes for many more changes to come!

FYI:  My fantastic Space Camp adventure was possible because of my new favorite company, Honeywell, as I was part of Honeywell Educators Space Academy.  This amazing program paid my way to Space Camp, and applications are open now for next year!  If you teach middle school math or science, you should apply!!

Day 5 at Space Camp

       Last day of Space Camp.....hard to believe how fast it went by.  We started off the day with a movie in the IMAX theater.  It was really good.  Awesome graphics, and like so much stuff at Space Camp, just awe inspiring.  I know this is going to sound really corny, but I think more than any particular lesson that I will take back to my classroom, what Space Camp really did for me was help me realize that it is not just my job to teach kids math...I need to inspire them to find it interesting, and achievable and worth it.  Maybe I can do that through the wonder of space, at least for some kids!
   Then we had some extra time to do what we wanted, so we spent some more time at the Museum.  They had a lot of cool stuff, plus a flight landing simulator (everyone but Bacon sucked!!!). Kristen and I were excited to find a display from the movie Space Camp (which we both loved) so we got a picture with it...in our flight suits!  Yeah, I'm sure you can hardly tell me apart from Leah Thompson and Kate Capshaw.

     After lunch we got our chance to do the 1/6th gravity chair.....supposed to simulate a moon walk.  That is so much fun!!!!!   You got to do up and back twice.  So the first time you do bunny hop, then sideways hop, then "Baywatch" run, and then free choice.  All of the hopping is super fun...you can hop super high with almost no effort.  The run......hard work.....no Bueno!
       For one of our final challenges we had the x force????? Challenge.  In this challenge, we had to work as teams to build a lander and rover for an egg.  I was on the lander team.  It was set up like the other challenges,with a certain amount of credits,etc....   We were further challenged by the fact that Mandy was in a hurry to get us finished, so we had maybe 20 minutes for the whole challenge.  We built out lander from a folded piece of cardboard and a tissue paper parachute.  We were trying to work out some sort of harness to keep the rover in place, but pretty much ran out of time before we finished that.  The actual challenge consisted of dropping your egg inside the rover inside the lander from the second story.  You got points for survival of your egg and proximity to the landing zone (a hula hoop).  Given the small amount of time we had, we did well!  Our egg was unharmed, and we landed just outside the hula hoop, so we hardly got any penalty.  The rover didn't stay in place, but since the egg survived, who cares??!!
     We had heard at the beginning of the day that we would get to hear Homer Hickam speak.....Emily and Chasity were soooooo excited!  He was a great speaker, telling us about some of his experiences as a kid in a coal mining town in West Virginia. We even got a signed copy of Rocket Boys!  He also talked about his work for NASA and how he had helped build and teach the scuba part at Advanced Space Camp.
     Then it was time for our graduation.  It was a nice ceremony, and as they had throughout the week, Honeywell just made you feel absolutely valued as an educator.  Coming from a state that currently seems to hate teachers, I can't say how wonderful it was to be appreciated.  At graduation, we got our packets, which had our wings and our graduation certificates .  Plus they flipped our name tags.  😀.  The best part of graduation was the awards though.  Needless to say, we did NOT win the award for best shuttle missions.  Going into graduation, that was the only award I had heard about.  Turns out they also give an award for Best Engineering Team.  It is a patch called the Commander's Cup...and guess who won???  That's right.....Team Columbus!! All the stuff that we had done like ablative shields, landers, etc.... All counted,and WE WON!!  Very excited!

     Last thing was a graduation dance sponsored by Honeywell, and it was awesome.  Again, Honeywell really knows how to make you feel appreciated.  The whole party was at the Davidson center, under the Saturn V rocket.  Great food, good band, free drinks, dancing...need I say more?  Great way to end a spectacular week.
      The next day I had a few more hours since I did not leave until mid day.  Luke and Emily and I rode some rides, did some simulators, and goofed off, until it was time to say goodbye to Space Camp.

My Space Camp Adventures

June 2016:  Honeywell Educators at Space Camp

The opportunity to attend Space Camp for Educators in Huntsville, Alabama truly was the opportunity of a lifetime. I truly want to remember every thing I can about this amazing experience, so that's why I'm starting this blog.

I arrived in Huntsville on Wednesday, June 15.  I really didn't know very much about the US Space and Rocket Center prior to arriving in Huntsville.  It's pretty awesome when you start to see the rockets looming up ahead of you!  Driving by the US Space and Rocket Center for the first time was pretty cool....getting to see what a large facility it really it, and knowing that I was going to spend the next five days at this place.  We stopped at the Space and Rocket Center for lunch, and then it was off to University of Alabama to check in.  The first thing we did when we got to University of Alabama was check in and get our flight suits.  I've got to say....getting my own flight suit was pretty exciting!  After we checked in, the rest of the day was very low-key.  My roommates didn't arrive until later that evening, so I just kind of relaxed for the rest of the day.

      

So Thursday was my first actual day of camp.  I think the first surprise for me was to hear that we had to take our flight suits with us every day....I guess I thought we would ease into the flight suits, but that was definitely not the case!  It turns out that day one is "Media Day", and between that and two guest speakers we were in and out of our suits all day long!  

The first thing we did was have a guest speaker, who was Bill Buckbee.  He was incredible to listen to, as he had been involved with the space program right from the beginning.  He had all kinds of cool stories about the early space program.  I think that thing that he said that stuck with me the most was responding about why we haven't gotten to Mars yet....because no one has challenged us to.  That really made me stop and think.  We got to have team pictures with him after, plus we got a signed book. 

Next we got to go have a docent led tour of the Davidson Center, which housed a Saturn V rocket...full sized up on the ceiling.  Our tour guide was named Luke Talley, and he was awesome.  He knew so much about the rocket, and at the end of the tour he showed us his picture in the museum.....because he had worked on the Saturn V.  So amazing!

Then it was time for team and group pictures.....outside, under the shuttle.  And oh my, was it hot in our flight suits.  Ugh!

The next thing on day one was getting to listen to an actual astronaut, Dotti Metcalf Lindenburger.  She was also a Space Camp graduate!  her message was great..don't give up on your dreams. Work hard to make harm come true.  The best part of her message was the idea that we have to tell people what our dreams are so they can support us and hold us accountable.

      

  

Day 2 at Space Camp

We started off day 2 by working on our Mission Patch.  now, this might not sound that exciting, but it was really pretty cool.  Every shuttle mission has a mission patch to represent it, so at Space Camp, every team gets a Mission Patch.  now I don't know if I've mentioned it yet, but Team Columbus was AMAZING!  I really love our patch.  We threw around lots of ideas, but I love what we settled on...something that really represents each of us, but also our group as a whole.  We just got started on it this morning, and it took us several days to finish.
         The three sections around the edge represent the three countries on Team Columbus: USA, Turkey and China.  The US is represented by the eagle in the bottom section.  The eight stars above the eagle's wings represent the eight US teachers, and our names are listed around the edge.  The lotus flower represents out our Chinese team members.  The Turkish section has an "evil eye" in the middle.  Our Turkish friends explained to us that this represents protection from evil in their culture.  The two astronauts represent Elveda and Figen.  The middle section of our patch represents the entire group, and what we saw as the mission that connects us all together.  I think this was the hardest part for us to decide on....we had much debate about gears vs. rockets.  We decided on a rocket going from earth to Mars with the letters STEM inside, since this is what will get us to Mars.  I'm glad we decided on this design....Bill Buckbee's words stick with me.  Why haven't we gone to Mars?  Because no one has challenged us to.  I want to challenge my students to dream of going to Mars.

    Probably the hardest part was figuring out who could draw, because it turns out that none of us think of ourselves as very good artists.  Mostly Emily was the artist....I did get to help color (don't earth and Mars look nice???😊).
     We also got to go spend time at the NASA educational office and look at all of the cool lesson plans that NASA has available.
     Next up was one of the things that I was most excited about at Space Camp.....shuttle simulation practice.  The shuttle missions are now considered "historic missions",  since the shuttles have been retired.  But to me, I've known the shuttles all my life.  I remember where I was when Challenger exploded; I loved watching Space Camp as a kid, so this was it for me.  I had been assigned to be part of mission control, which was my last choice of jobs...but I ended up loving it!  I was basically in charge of monitoring the weather for launch and landing, as well as something else that I can't remember.  My role was called GNC! But I have no idea what that stands for.  I got to sit next to Kristen, who was flight director.  We were all pretty stressed out at practice....at least those of us on mission control were.  I think Luke and Bacon in the shuttle were pretty chill.  The notebooks you have to work off of are pretty confusing at first,and we were just getting that down when they started throwing "anomalies" at us.....you know,problems!  Let me tell you, we kind of sucked at the problems that first day.  It was cool, but kind of overwhelming too. Oh, and as weather girl, let me just tell you that it is 78 degrees with 25% visibility at Kennedy...I was very good at that forecast! Oh, and Luke was keeping it fun by showing us pictures of space monkeys!

     Leaving there we got to see some of the museum, including sitting on a space toilet.
     We also split up for other lessons this day.  I, of course, had signed up for the math lesson, and it was pretty cool.  Our task was to create a structure that could withstand Martian boulders being thrown at us.  In reality this entailed designing a Lego building that could stand in a gutter of dirt while balls rolled at it: baseballs, large bouncy balls, and basketballs.  Bacon's group was done quickly.  My group really struggled to find a way to withstand the basketball, but we kept at it until we figured it out.  I totally think this would be cool

to do at school with some modifications.....either varying the type of soil, or the slope of the gutter.
      Another part of day two was low ropes course.  This was mostly about teamwork, problem solving and collaboration.  The two main games we got to do were toxic waste and traffic jam.  We did ok at those....it was interesting to get to see everyone chiming in to solve the puzzles.  Oh but the hula hoop...it sounds so simple...just set it on your fingers and set it on the ground.  I mostly remember Deb yelling at us, "Down!" and "Why am I moving towards the woods?"
     Last stop of the day....building rockets.  Just another day at Space Camp!!!
      Ok, not sure exactly when we did this, but at some point our team also decided to film a team video....trying to win the HESA team challenge.  We had fun filming this (even Luke, who had to take the fall), and it still makes me giggle every time I watch it.

Day 3 at Space Camp

The day started off with this gentle and from Turkey handing out these amazing wooden boxes to everyone.  They were beautiful carved boxes, which had a picture of a famous building from his town on the top.  It was filled with Turkish delight candy.  I have to say.....as a Narnia fan, I was soooo excited to get to try Turkish delight.  I've always wondered what it is like.  But mostly I was overwhelmed by the respect and generosity of the Turkish people, who would come with tokens of appreciation for all of the teachers....wow!
      First thing of the morning was our Space Shuttle Mission!  We were all excited (and maybe a little stressed!). We had devised a complicated (NOT) page numbering system to help us deal with anomalies better, and we were ready to go!  Our page numbering system worked like a charm, and we were a lot better at the anomalies on our mission except when I accidentally gave the wrong page number...grrr.  We did well and had a great time.  The fun stuff happened at landing.  We realized pretty early as we brought the shuttle back that the cargo bay doors were open....oops!!!  But, hands down, my favorite part of our mission was when our mission control trainer said, "Uh, Commander, you need to land the shuttle."  Which Luke did....pretty well.  Which is to say that we hit the runway (yay!), but with our front wheels first....I'm saying we probably ruined the landing gear, but hey, we didn't land in the "Red Zone".  So awesome!

     So next we had time with the Space Camp Ambassdors.  These are teachers that had been to Space Camp in the past, that had been very successful in changing their practice based on the experience.  One of them was from New York, and the other was from Romania.  At this point, the Romanian ambassador described several of her successful projects she had done.  The Dave, the New York ambassdor, presented a lesson.  It started with a Kahoot....which I ended in the top five!  Emily won....nickname Tall.  Luke (allidoiswin) didn't win this time.  This had become a total team joke, as he kept getting coke cans that said "All I do is win".  I think maybe one came after our successful shuttle mission.
      Next we were training for our Orion mission.  This time I was the pilot of the shuttle.  So this is  future mission, supposedly after we have established a base on the moon. So, all I have to say about the lunar shuttle is.....like to push buttons?  SO MANY BUTTONS!!!!  Buttons everywhere......so hard to find the one you're looking for.  The script tells you a general area to look (right panel, aft.....that kind of stuff)....but still, there is probably a hundred buttons on that panel, many with similar labels.   On the upside, I will now have a legitimate reason to say "Houston, we have a problem."  Ok, technically missions control on this mission is supposedly at Shackleton Crater on the moon...but still.  Jennifer and I stay in the lunar shuttle the whole time while other astronauts come and go to do lunar missions.

          
      So next we got to go to the water area.....so exciting!!!!  I had totally been looking forward to this!  We got to do the zip line first...yay!!!  This was supposed to simulate a parachute landing in the ocean.....I'm not really sure if that is the right description, but let's face it who cares?????  I get to zip line into a lake.....sweet!!!!!  Even though I don't love heights, I didn't have any trouble climbing the tower.  Once you get to the top, you have to stand backwards on a platform that you start from, and then step backwards to the very edge.  This wasn't my favorite part, but I was already strapped in, so it wasn't terrible.  Now while I'm talking about being strapped in.....can you say atomic wedgie.  Wow was I strapped in tight...no fear!  Anyway, then you just pick up your feet and go.  They have you go backwards as that is what you would really do.  It was awesome!!
     The other two water things we did were a simulated helicopter that crashed in the water and then a simulated water rescue in the basket.  These were cool too, although not as awesome as the zip line.  It was pretty scary how fast the water filled the helicopter.  The water basket rescue.....brrrr, that water is cold.
       That evening we got together in Chasity and Emily's room to work on our mission patch.  It was fun way to relax and hang out together after THE MOST EXCITING DAY!  I mean seriously, do days get any more exciting than this one??!!  And if haven't mentioned it, I totally hit the jackpot at Space Camp...Team Columbus was the best.  We had so much fun together!!!

Day 4 at Space Camp

We started out our day by launching our rockets.  Chasity and Emily were so excited.....the launch site was named Homer Hickam Field.  Homer Hickam is the guy from the movie October Sky, and he was Emily and Chasity's hero.  Rocket launching was fun, and everybody's rocket launched fine.  Unfortunately, my rocket launched directly towards the trees so I had no hope of recovering it.

        Next we had our Orion mission.  OK, I'll start by saying that those missions are so cool, but our Orion mission was kind of a disaster.  We had a terrible time staying with the MET, and we skipped around terribly.  I think there was several issues, but I feel like mostly we hadn't been assigned to jobs that fit our skills and that made it hard for us to succeed.  I also think that our crew trainer wasn't as helpful for us as the one at our shuttle mission.
       After lunch we had the Multi axis trainer.  This was something else I had been so excited to try.  This was right out of the movie Space Camp....except there was no steering mechanism like the one Lea Thompson practiced on.  It is supposed to represent a tumble spin.  Surprisingly, it didn't make you dizzy and it was totally cool.  I lucked out and even got to go twice!!!

    Next, we went to the ablative shielding activity.  We knew a little bit about the gist of the activity because Spencer had talked about it at the one actual educator break out session at we had (all of the others were reclassified as "free time" by our crew trainer.  Anyway, I wasn't necessarily that excited about this activity, but I really loved it!  Like many of the activities, you knew your job, and you had a certain amount of credits to spend on supplies to do the job.  In this case, the job was to create a heat shield for an "eggstronaut" (we named him Neil Eggstrong) that would protect him from a propane torch for five minutes.   If your egg exploded, you got no points, and points were deducted for partially cooked eggs.  Any unspent credits were added to your score.  There was a ton of supplies to pick from with different values...I don't remember them all, but some were lasagna noodles, copper, cork, felt, spackle, and foil.   After much debate, my group decided to use layers of cork, spackle, and foil.  Our egg survived, totally uncooked!  As did everyone from team Columbus .....go team!
       That night we decided to go out for drinks as a team.  Although we invited everyone, only the Americans decided to go that night.  We had a blast all night....including trying to fit all eight of us in one taxi.....can you say clown car?  We even got to name our own yummy drink....the ISS Columbus.  It also happened to be game 7 of the NBA finals between the Cavs and the Warriors.  Jennifer was a Warriors fan, and Luke was a Cavs fan, so it was pretty exciting.  The Cavs won, so Luke even talked the bartender into letting him keep the Arrogant Bastard beer glass.
     I can't remember the exact order of things, but at some point during this day we also did the "rides".....the G-Force and the Space Shot.  They were awesome.  The G Force simulated 4 Gs, and let me tell you, that is something else.  Just trying to move your leg is very difficult, and your face pretty much feels like it's going  to fly off.  I am not sure how many Gs there are at takeoff, but holy cow that is intense.  The Space Shot is supposed to simulate weightlessness.  It's pretty much like the detonator at Worlds of Fun....shoots you straight up and then drops you.  The part at the top is the weightless part.  That ride was super fun!

Reasons I Get Excited About STEM Challenges in Math

       STEM activities are all the rage, and my goal for this year is to make time for one STEM challenge each quarter this year.  I'll be honest, I'm fairly new to the STEM bandwagon.  Prior to 2016, I hadn't done any STEM challenges and I really had no plans to incorporate STEM in my classroom.  I figured that I had enough on my plate just trying to teach all of the stuff that was in my standards.

       That all changed in the summer of 2016 when I was privileged to attend Honeywell Educators at Space Academy.  Space Camp helped me realize that I not only need to teach my kids math skills.  I also need to help them see the exciting things that STEM can open up for them.  I need to help my students see themselves as people who are capable of using math as a tool solve problems.  So began my experience with STEM challenges.

     Over the last couple of years, I've found some STEM activities that really fit my needs.  This year, I plan to do a STEM challenge every quarter.  I've become a STEM challenge enthusiast, and here are the reasons why I love STEM challenges.

1.  STEM challenges are a great way for kids to really see the real world applications of math.  Let's face it....our textbooks try to use story problems to accomplish this task, but they are often not successful.  The contexts in story problems are often too contrived to make students care about them.

The beauty of a STEM challenge, however, is that you are giving students a problem to solve.  As they complete the challenge, math can be one of the tools that they use to find and gauge their success.

2.   STEM challenges are a place to really show the need for precise measurements.  Measurement of a variable is often the key to determining success in a STEM challenge.  If the challenge is to build the tallest pipe cleaner tower, accurate measurement is definitely a key.  In other STEM challenges, students must stay within given constraints.  For example, if you are only allowed to use 6 square inches of foil in your product, you will need to measure accurately for this.

3.  The need for correct labels is clear.  I was doing a STEM challenge last year where students had to build a shelf to hold as many quarters as possible.  They were given limitations for the size of the shelf, such as less than 6 square inches.  This STEM challenge really exposed my students' misunderstandings about the difference between inches and square inches.  Even better, it gave me a way to address this misunderstanding at a time that my students needed to know that information.

4.  STEM challenges are a great chance to introduce students to the power of spreadsheets.   STEM challenges often involve data collection, and this is a good way to incorporate the technology part of STEM.  Spreadsheets are a great way to collect the data. What a great way to introduce students to the power of a spreadsheet than with a bunch of data that they collected!  Last year we did a STEM pipe cleaner challenge, and there were so many excited students when I showed them that they could enter the calculations once and the spreadsheet could do all of the calculating for them.   In the real world that we live in, much of the math that we need can be automated with a spreadsheet.  It is so important for students to begin to see that math isn't always about doing the calculations yourself, but sometimes about knowing how to get a computer to do them for you!

5.  STEM challenges are a great way to work on a variety of math concepts.  Many STEM challenges involve measurement, data collection, and data analysis.  For many STEM challenges, however, the math part stops with these things.  However, I've found ways to incorporate many other topics:

• Area, surface area, and volume:  STEM challenges often involve creating some object, so I've found that I can often incorporate area, surface area or volume.  I did a STEM challenge last year where students had to build a diving pool for a daredevil high-diver (pencil cap erasers!).  After the challenge, students had to find the surface area and volume of their pool to see who had the pool with the least surface area.
• Percent change:  This works especially well if you give students a chance to improve their original creation.  For example, lots of STEM challenges involve students building tall towers.  I've seen these with spaghetti and marshmallows, pipe cleaners, cups, or even balloons!  To incorporate percent change, have the students complete the original project and measure their tower.  Then give them time to make revisions, or wait until another day and have them try again.  Then students can compare the percent change between the first and second attempt.
• Ratios:  I did one STEM challenge where students had to build a tower from candy and toothpicks.  The catch was that they were assigned a particular ratio of candy to toothpicks that they had to use. 
• Equations and inequalities:  I've found there are often ways to incorporate equations and inequalities into a STEM challenge.  Let's say your STEM challenge is for students to build a tower that is at least 12 inches tall.  Why not use this to introduce the idea of writing inequalities?  Or you could have all students put their tower heights on a number line, and introduce the idea of graphing inequalities.  When we built our candy/toothpick towers, we wrote equations relating the number of toothpicks to candy.

6.  STEM challenges are a great way to teach a growth mindset.  STEM challenges are all about trying things out and making adjustments to make things work better.   During a STEM challenge, it is no big deal to have something not work and try something different.  What a great opportunity for teachers to reinforce the power of learning from our mistakes to figure out better solutions or understandings.  I take any chance I can to reinforce the power of learning from our mistakes with my students.  

7.  STEM challenges are great for those random days that you don't know what to do with.  You know what I'm talking about....that 2 day week before Thanksgiving when you don't want to start something new.  Or that day when fourteen kids have the flu and you don't want them to miss the lesson that is such a foundation for your unit.  STEM challenges are great to fill in these random days, and yet still be focused on math.

8.  STEM challenges are great to engage all different kinds of students.  Kids love doing hands-on stuff and even my most reluctant math students will dive into a STEM challenge.

9.  They're fun!   We get so worried about teaching standards and finishing everything that sometimes the fun gets lost.  It's nice to hear the fun and excitement of a STEM day!  It's nice to hear kids in the hall talking about how much fun math is today.  It's nice to have kids still talking about something you did in class a week later.

10.  STEM challenges are a great way to get kids collaborating.  I always have my students work in groups on STEM challenges.  STEM challenges are a great way to get kids exchanging ideas, and incorporating ideas from many students.  This is a great way to work on "soft skills"!

What is your favorite STEM activity to do in math class?  Comment below!

Celebrating National STEM Day by Putting the M in STEM

    November 8 was National STEM Day.  When a colleague came in my room a couple of days before that to ask what I was going to do for National STEM Day....I'll be honest.  My first thought was, "I'm so far behind my pacing guide....I can't afford to do ANYTHING!".  But as I sat and thought about it, I came to the same conclusion I've come to several times since attending Space Camp....my job is not only to teach kids math skills, but to inspire them to want to learn math.  My job is to show them that math could be a part of their future, and that it could be a good thing.

     So I decided that I would do a STEM activity, because my students needed that chance to be creative, and work collaboratively, and do so many other things that STEM can do in the classroom.  And I did work in some important math from my standards (even if it wasn't exactly what my pacing guide said I should be doing!).

     The challenge for my students this time:  To build a tower with a shelf at the top that could hold at least two quarters.  Students had a limited amount of "credits" to spend, and they got bonus points for unspent credits.  They also got bonus points if their tower could hold more than two quarters.  Each group had to draw three cards that guided their building.  The cards had inequalities that gave students criteria they had to meet for tower height, base area and shelf area.

       

      I don't know about your students, but in 7th grade, many of my students still struggle with inequality symbols.  There were many discussions throughout the day about the meaning of the cards.  "Does this mean our tower can be 5 inches, or does it have to be taller?"  "Does the area of the base have to be more or lesss than 6 square inches?"  "How big is 3 square inches?"  I find the open-ended activities like this are a great chance for formative assessment for me, if I listen to the students having conversations with each other.  For this lesson, I could definitely tell that many of my students didn't fully understand inequality symbols, as well as the difference between inches and square inches.

     After a short introduction, my students ended up with about 30 minutes to work on this STEM challenge.  That seemed to be just about the right amount of time.  Because students got extra points for unspent credits, they were very careful about material use.  That was one nice thing about this STEM challenge....the materials ended up being really cheap!  The things I had available were graph paper, index cards, tape, staples, straws, foil (cut in 2" squares) and pipe cleaners.

     My student creations were AMAZING!  I had one group that used a single piece of paper, and built a 5 inch tower that held 15 quarters.  I had groups in every hour that build towers so sturdy that 30 quarters wasn't enough to topple them (I realized in 1st hour that I had to put a limit on how many extra points they could get for sturdiness....one group of boys built a tower that held 5 huge library books and still hadn't toppled!).  Students were engaged, creative, and working hard....STEM for the win!

     The next day, I used this as a chance to teach kids how to graph inequalities on the number line.  In each class, I had a handful of students that remembered learning this in 6th grade, but the majority did not.  Using the cards from the STEM challenge, student quickly understood how to graph inequalities.   I feel like this made it well worth it to have take the time to do the STEM challenge.

If you're interested in this Inequality STEM Challenge lesson, you can get it at my TpT store.
   

Whole Class Participation Techniques

         As this school year begins, I've been excited about how my classes have been taking shape so far.  The kids are great, and the classroom is starting to feel like community.  We're all starting to get to know each other a bit, and the kids are starting to understand my expectations.
          I read a book over the summer about total participation techniques.  I was really excited about this idea of getting every kid to answer questions, rather than just one kid.  So as I started planning for building my classroom climate, this was one of my major considerations.  I really wanted to utilize technology in a way to increase whole class participation whenever possible.  These have been the things that I've been really pleased with in the first two weeks when it comes to increasing class participation.

1. Go Formative--I was introduced to GoFormative as one of the sessions at Space Camp this summer and thought it had potential.  I tried it last week and loved it!  I have used online quizzes on Google forms or quia, but what is different about Go Formative is that you are seeing data real-time (not just when kids finish).  And not only can you see it real-time, you can send kids individual feedback, and they can make corrections based on the feedback you sent them.  So here was a sample question:

The answer I was wanting was that students disagreed, because the numbers were not in order.    

Here is an example interaction between one student and myself.

The student's initial response (which you can't see because he fixed it) was "agree", so I sent him the first message about "What do you do first?"  This helped him realize the numbers weren't ordered, and he then changed his answer simple to "disagree".  However, I also wanted students to justify their answer, so I sent the second message about "Why do you disagree?", leading to his final response.
            I was impressed with how powerful these interactions were, and look forward to using this tool more in my classroom!

2.  Desmos--I have written before about being a big fan of Desmos, but this week as I used it as a way to encourage whole class participation and formative assessment.  We were doing one of my favorite lessons, one about students who are going into business together.  My class has to analyze the business plans in terms of how much money each partner initially has, and how much they save each week.  It's a great activity to teach distributive property, combining like terms,  and the appearance of linear functions with positive/negative slope.  I have always loved this lesson, but Desmos added something to it.  We did most of the lesson on paper, and then I used just a few Desmos questions for real-time formative assessment.

I love being able to see everyone's response to a question on one screen.  I also like being able to quickly show several different strategies for determining whose graph it was, while highlighting student work.  It was fantastic!

3.  Response Cards--This was my low-tech whole class participation technique...but still effective.  We were having a debate about a question I had on the board, so I had students take out the "agree, disgree, or not sure" cards. I was able to get a quick feel for the mood of the class, as well as who might present arguments for each side to further our discussion.  Quick, easy method for formative assessment!  (You can get these response cards free at my Teachers Pay Teacher store, by the way)

4.  Google Questions on classroom--I really enjoyed using the question function on Google Classroom.  I played a video which showed a visual representation of mean, and then asked students to respond as a Google Question whether they thought the video represented mean, median or mode.  Again, quick, easy formative assessment.  Some classes got it right away, and that was great.  Other classes were split down the middle at first, but after viewing the responses in the question, every class quickly concluded that is was mean

The whole interaction probably only took 10 minutes, and it was extremely effective!

5.  Kahoot--This is certainly not a new one to me, as I used Kahoot frequently last year as well.  This year, I'm trying to refine a few things about Kahoot.  A couple of things I'm planning to incorporate in my Kahoots this year are spiraling review and trivia. I want to add just a couple of spiral review questions to every Kahoot, just to keep skills sharp.  And the trivia is just for fun...the kids love knowing that every now and then I'll throw in something random just for fun!
       I also love to use Kahoot to teach error analysis, and trying to get the kids to figure out what error had to be made to get the incorrect answers.