Transformation Lab

This is an extension of an activity that I found awhile ago from Andrew Shauver. He turned reflections into a 3Act problem, asking students to use knowledge of geometric properties to decide which reflection was executed the best.

I thought this was a great activity to go along with these notes which require students to perform their own transformations, much like the pictures from Andrew's lesson.

When I've done this I like to have the students do the measuring themselves. This could be individually or in groups. I think it's a great way to reinforce the geometric facts of what it means to be a reflection/translation/rotation/dilation and helps to show what a congruence transformation means. Really great conversations happen about side lengths, distances, parallel lines, etc. 

Proving Triangles Congruent Tip Sheet

More geometry things today!

I didn't make this up, just reformatted something I found here. Formal proofs are one of the things that I'd avoid if given the choice, but it is part of our testing here so it is a necessary evil. So when we do congruent triangle proofs this is something that they can use to help lay out the logic involved.

Download: pdf    ppt

Geometric Transformation Notes

This is one that I've had around for awhile but never shared it since I didn't find it all that unique. It is something that I use every year though so thought I'd share. I think it's a good basic page of notes for geometric transformation. 

One disclaimer though is that I don't have any pictures of it all filled in. I'll do my best to describe what goes into each. Something interesting about these files too is that I think they do a good job of showing the direction I've moved with the way I use ISNs (a word I even hesitate to use anymore- but that's a much longer story for another time) and the notes I give. There's a lot less focus on fancy foldables, and fill in the blanks, and things of the like. I've been spending far more time trying to focus on big picture ideas and understanding the major concepts behind how things work. 

These notes are along those lines. There are four, one for each type of transformation. Each is a pretty big idea and is more than one day's worth of work. Usually we'll fill in different pieces on different days, definitely never a whole class period of note taking. 

Teenagers are like soap

I read this in a magazine recently:

Think of a teenager as a wet bar of soap. If your contact is too light, it will slip out. If you apply too much pressure, it will do the same.
(Source)

While this was intended as parenting advice, it is also good classroom management advice. I've taught both middle and high school and while middle school often gets the bad rap, managing high school classes seems to be especially tricky business. It seems often that teachers struggling with classroom management falls under one of these two camps.

Trying to come in too authoritarian doesn't go over well. Coming in with a long list of rules and making it clear that they're not going to get away with anything doesn't go over well. With these teachers, the kids start to enjoy making them angry.

Organ Function Grinder Machine

This is an activity that I really like but forgot about for awhile. One of my projects for this summer was to clean up all my files and I recently rediscovered this. After starting this post, I even rediscovered that I blogged about this awhile ago right after I made it. 

Since then I've refined it a bit so I thought it was worth sharing again.

A bit of background is that this idea came from the Math Midway exhibit which was here at the Liberty Science Center awhile ago. My favorite was the Organ Function Grinder. This is the activity guide that goes along with the exhibit. 

This activity is my attempt at recreating the exhibit. 

The basic idea is a three function machine where the kids needs to play with the dials and choose input numbers to try to make goal numbers. I really like that they include some interesting functions, especially invert. I also like that there are more than one way to get the answers, that's always a huge plus.

SBG Score Posters

In the past, I've hung up a "What does my grade mean?" poster, that was too small to be usable.

This year I hung these up instead:

(the typo is corrected in the file below)

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Some classroom finds

Within the past couple years I've been making an effort to spend less money and time on decorating my classroom. I've accumulated so many things that I really don't need any more. It is hard though when I find pretty things to not buy them all. These are some fun things I've found lately that I wish were going to be in my classroom.

These I was really surprised to find at Ikea. I'm not sure if they're intended to be motivational posters or if they're just playing into the typography trend, but they're perfect for the classroom.

Course Guide

This is a super old post that for some reason I never published. I do still use this as my syllabus posted on my website. I also still use the one black and white version for the kids' notebooks.  So while it's it's an old post it's still relevant. 

Old post:

Last summer I revised my syllabus into this one page course guide which I really like. Well I came across this awesome syllabus on Pinterest and which made me want to revamp mine yet again. 

In the past I've always made different versions for my different courses but really my class policies and information is the same in all my courses so I decided to take that out and just make it a general information sheet on the highlights.

In the tweet below, Rob Patin shares the Photoshop template he used to create his original version.

@MrsGanley Thank you! I used Photoshop. There is a PSD template here: https://t.co/Pgvdm0iGn4
— Rob Patin (@talkEDtv) May 12, 2014

I discovered this far too late and it could have made my work in recreating this way easier, but oh well. Below is what I came up with. All the information is my own except for the section on Remind101, that is taken from the original. I loved pretty much everything about it so I didn't change all that much.

Metric Conversion Posters

These are some other ones from the archives (aka folders I'm cleaning out and forgot I ever made). I know the multiply/divide by 10 is a bit of a trick (I like to convert using proportions), but maybe someone might like them.

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Hang in there

This is super random, but I came across it while cleaning out an old folder. It was someone else's idea and was intended to be reminiscent of the old kitten poster. I never did print it out but thought maybe someone would like to.

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