If you are unfamiliar:

Folder with all planning documents and handouts that I used.
Desmos Activity Builder (thanks to Andrew Stadel for helping to make it better)
Reflections from the previous year.
Reflections from my first year.
Collection of all reflections.

A little while ago, one of the teachers in my district emailed me, and let me just say that there are two words that will get me fired up in a hurry: Barbie Zipline. Yep, her students were finishing a unit on Pythagorean Theorem and the Distance Formula, so this was a natural fit. The downside is that my new role makes it nearly impossible to do something without 2 months notice. MAJOR bummer. The good news was that she did it last year and felt comfortable taking the risk alongside one of the teachers who also did the lesson last year. 

If you were to go back and read the reflections from previous years, there is a lot of growth, a lot of second-guessing, and a lot of improvement. I think that this time, the biggest improvement was that I didn't have to be there. Because of a meeting I needed to attend, they started without me, and I was merely a cheerleader and instigator, going around and asking students if they thought a trial was safe and fun. No? Why not? Yeah? How come?

The only minor change we made was that, instead of using fishing line, we used yellow mason line on a windup handle because it doesn't have nearly the same elasticity as fishing line:

As you get more comfortable teaching something, you can find new ways to tweak it, improve it, and own it. The two teachers who took the reigns certainly did that. 

​I didn't need to be there, but I wasn't about to miss it. I mean really, who doesn't want to see a crash like this?

Oh, and the photographers' creativity.

Like Matt and I talk about in The Classroom Chef, there is something amazing about going outside and taking a risk. Escaping the four walls of normalcy opens you and your students to more opportunities that I wouldn't miss for the world.

Happy "Zipline Bobsled Team" Fishing

By now, you know about my work with Table Talk Math. You know that I am passionately working toward supporting parents everywhere with accessible ideas, prompts and conversation starters that will help them help their children succeed in math. You know that I am a firm believer that if we can empower the parent community to take risks with mathematics, it will have positive effects in our classrooms and, more importantly, our communities. 

What you didn't know is that, through all the work I've done, I had never hosted a parent workshop in my own district... until now. When my district's director of community relations, who is already someone who's been in my corner for quite some time, saw that I was doing things outside of my district, she jumped on the opportunity to have me come in and help.

We settled on a couple dates to host two parent math nights. Oh wait. Parent math nights. You've done those. They're common... right? 

Yes, parent math night, but unlike the ones we typically do. My main beef with the standard math nights is that they are filled with games, manipulatives, and prompts that cost money, take time to set up, and are not readily available to our parent community that struggles with math themselves. 

Enter: The #MTBoS and Table Talk Math

Scattered throughout the room were a variety of prompts from Estimation 180, Visual Patterns, Which One Doesn't Belong, Fraction Talks, Would You Rather, SolveMe Mobiles, and Open Middle. The biggest help of the whole evening was that I had a student representative at each station who could help the parents and their children understand the question. It was incredible to see how quickly the students took on the role of teacher and embraced it! Thanks to Matt Vaudrey for pointing out a tweet from Jeremiah Reusch on the idea.