Today was a great day.
This semester, I have been focusing on some teachers in my district who are open to having me come in, try out some ideas, offer up some coaching, and take some risks of my own. At one of our 8 comprehensive high schools, I have found a teacher willing to let me come in, yet she still wants to be a part of the process; I love it.
Leading up to today's lesson, students had been learning about parallel lines and transversals, as well as angle pair relationships. They could accurately identify the relationships and whether or not they were congruent or supplementary. Therefore, today's lesson needed to provide for a little bit of review, a little bit of extension, and reinforce the progress that has been made along the way.
In our district, we have a subscription to Peardeck, a platform that piggybacks onto Google Slides and allows students to interact with the content by typing, dragging, drawing, or selecting. I love it because I am provided with instant feedback from students and can use the feedback to pivot instruction immediately.
First, students did a Kahoot! activity to get them reset for math class. While I am not normally a fan of the program, today proved to me how it can be useful at times to get students locked into math class.
Next, we started the Peardeck for the day and handed out a worksheet for the kids to document their learning. Students would sketch what they saw on the slide in the space provided, then jot down the measure of the angles based on information they had in front of them.
This semester, I have been focusing on some teachers in my district who are open to having me come in, try out some ideas, offer up some coaching, and take some risks of my own. At one of our 8 comprehensive high schools, I have found a teacher willing to let me come in, yet she still wants to be a part of the process; I love it.
Leading up to today's lesson, students had been learning about parallel lines and transversals, as well as angle pair relationships. They could accurately identify the relationships and whether or not they were congruent or supplementary. Therefore, today's lesson needed to provide for a little bit of review, a little bit of extension, and reinforce the progress that has been made along the way.
In our district, we have a subscription to Peardeck, a platform that piggybacks onto Google Slides and allows students to interact with the content by typing, dragging, drawing, or selecting. I love it because I am provided with instant feedback from students and can use the feedback to pivot instruction immediately.
First, students did a Kahoot! activity to get them reset for math class. While I am not normally a fan of the program, today proved to me how it can be useful at times to get students locked into math class.
Next, we started the Peardeck for the day and handed out a worksheet for the kids to document their learning. Students would sketch what they saw on the slide in the space provided, then jot down the measure of the angles based on information they had in front of them.
The thing that threw the class off right away is that the first problem was clearly not a set of parallel lines. What are we supposed to do?!
Assumptions were made, frustrations were had, and progress was clear: the entire class was able to realize that we can't assume two lines are parallel without some mathematical proof.
Knowing that this is the standard for high school, it is not enough for students to merely use parallel lines and transversals; they must know how to prove that a set of lines are parallel or are not parallel.
At this point, we opened up the slide deck for everyone to go through it at their own pace, and to our absolute delight, the overwhelming majority of the class was confidently plowing through the prompts. We stopped them a couple times to clarify or point something out, but the overall vibe of the day was outstanding.
It's been a while since I handed out that many fist bumps and positive reinforcement and it felt great. For the kids, for the room, and especially for me; I needed a day of celebrating student success.
There is always room to grow, but this is certainly an activity I can see being used again in future classes.
Happy "Progress Feels Good" Fishing
Knowing that this is the standard for high school, it is not enough for students to merely use parallel lines and transversals; they must know how to prove that a set of lines are parallel or are not parallel.
At this point, we opened up the slide deck for everyone to go through it at their own pace, and to our absolute delight, the overwhelming majority of the class was confidently plowing through the prompts. We stopped them a couple times to clarify or point something out, but the overall vibe of the day was outstanding.
It's been a while since I handed out that many fist bumps and positive reinforcement and it felt great. For the kids, for the room, and especially for me; I needed a day of celebrating student success.
There is always room to grow, but this is certainly an activity I can see being used again in future classes.
Happy "Progress Feels Good" Fishing
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