Comments on: Charge! – Activity Makeover Series

By: Mark Kreie (@kreiem)

Mark Kreie (@kreiem) — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 18:51:14 +0000

I would agree that the paper / pencil / discussion version of this 3-ACT is superior to the current Activity Builder version. As Elizabeth and Nathan have referenced, 3-ACTs are maybe best if served without AB.

That said, I do think utilizing the Classroom Conversation Toolkit w/ teacher pacing and pausing might be a benefit to this activity. I think the first four slides are a great ACT 1. The Activity Builder gives students an anonymous voice to make sense of the problem and generate what information would be helpful to solve the problem. I would recommend using slides 1-4 as ACT even if I were to complete ACTs 2 and 3 w/ pencil and paper.

By: Elizabeth Raskin (@elizraskin)

Elizabeth Raskin (@elizraskin) — Wed, 16 Nov 2016 03:54:57 +0000

I’ve looked at this activity in the past but have never used it for the reasons stated above: It seems a little advanced for my kids in the way it requires them to solve the problem. I’ve often struggled with the idea of using Activity Builder for 3 acts…I think it’s hard to create an activity without guiding students to solve a problem a certain way and one of the beautiful things about 3 acts is allowing students to determine what information is important (to an extent) and what to do with it.

Another thought…I know different phones show different things when charging, but my phone shows “Approx. 1h 7min until fully charged”. It might be interesting to frame the question in the form of “How accurate is that?” Unless that means having to completely recreate the screenshots (which I don’t suggest you do).

By: Nathan Kraft

Nathan Kraft — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 14:13:31 +0000

Disclaimer: I’ve only ever done this without Desmos and I’ve only done it with 6th graders who have some exposure to ratio tables and graphing, but not linear equations.

I’m trying to figure out what Desmos adds to the activity. I couldn’t use it because my students would be lost when it came to creating a trend line. To solve this, they really have to think about rates and extending those values as a table. In the end, their solutions probably closely match a student’s solution who used a graph.

With that being said, this activity pigeonholes students into one way of doing it, and even for students in higher grades, I’d like to give that option to explore it differently. I think Desmos might be a good tool for students that want to explore graphing, but how do you manage that? As an activity, you’d have to say something like…”if you’re using a graphical approach, go to slide 7. If you’re doing some other weird thing, just keep doing what you’re doing”.

In the end, maybe this doesn’t work in activity builder. Maybe you could just suggest using the Desmos calculator if you notice them working in that direction.

By: Dave Johnston

Dave Johnston — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 13:50:45 +0000

I am uncomfortable with the part of slide 5 in the Desmos version where you say “For example, 9:02 with a 5% charge would be (0, 5).” I think you can allow students to model that point in a way that makes sense to them. They may plot (2,5) and be able to interpret the points correctly. Alternately, if they try plotting (902,5), there is an opportunity for conversation there!

Can we give students more chucks of the data and give them an opportunity to revise their model? If this were my real phone in real life and I needed to know when it would be charged, I would be checking on it every so often to see if my estimate was still on track. We could give them the data from 9:02 to 9:30. Are you still happy with your model? Your prediction? Okay, from 9:30-9:50. Still happy? okay, 9:50-10:30. How about now?

What if different groups of students had different data points along the way & they discussed the models they came up with?