[One-Minute Makeover] Algebra 1 • Topic 1 Assessment (The Sequel!)

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Welcome Back!

Two posts and this is officially a series, right? Off we go!

Algebra 1 Assessment, Before

Let’s spend a little more time (how about 60 seconds?) looking at the second half of that old, filthy Topic 1 assessment:

That’s it. One measly simplification question. Nothing inherently wrong about the question itself, but…

Algebra 1 Assessment, After

With the updated Topic 1 assessment, I wanted to address to potential weaknesses to the approach I took on the original. First, I felt like one question wasn’t enough to get a sense of student mastery of distribution. For students who have mastered this, each question takes between 5 and 20 seconds, so time wasn’t an issue. With that in mind, I added two more “standard” distribution questions and scaled their difficulty:

(If the “compact form” comment doesn’t make sense and you wish it did—rare combination, possibly—let me know in the comments.)

Next, I wanted to add a question that required students to think outside the box, even if just a little, and at the same time would provide them with an opportunity to explain their thinking. It’s not terribly profound, but since we didn’t even hint at factoring during the lessons leading up to this assessment, I think this rather bland factoring problem, when appearing in this context, actually demands some critical thinking on the students’ part. Enough yammering, here’s the question:

Wrap Up

Thoughts? Comments? Questions? Outrage? Share any and all in the comments!

(Bonus Material: Confession)

The “original” revamped version of the Topic 1 assessment only included 7 questions. I added #8 just to spice up the blog post. Actually, in thinking about writing the post, I had an idea for how to—potentially—make this assessment even less terrible for next year. So it’s sort of a lie, and sort of not, with an emphasis on the latter, at least in/from the future. Errrr… Time travel. Brain hurts. 12:12 am. Time for bed.

[One-Minute Makeover] Algebra 1 • Topic 1 Assessment

Welcome to the Makeover!

Here’s an idea: I’ll write a post. It will take me a few minutes, or more.

Next, you’ll read the post. It’ll only take you a minute. It’ll be about assessment. Specifically, me describing how I took a terrible assessment question and made it less terrible.

Ready? Here we go!

Algebra 1 Assessment, Before

In my previous post I linked to the Algebra 1 SBG assessments I wrote in 2011-2012. Largely, they stink. Here’s an example of a terrible question from the Topic 1 assessment (full list-o-topics is here):

That was Form A, and I’ve created about a million forms (okay, more like 5-10 forms) for each assessment (in every class, though, so the total really is pretty close to a million). Here’s a similar question from Form B:

I was trying to write questions that assess whether my students understand the commutative, associative, and distributive properties. In particular, I wanted to see if they could name the properties based on an algebraic or numerical example. I was also hopeful that they knew which operations are commutative and associative (and which are not).

Oh. My.

Well, what I ended up with in my first attempt were some miserable true/false questions that don’t really accomplish any of what I was hoping for. An especially unfortunate consequence of the way I wrote the questions was that students who might otherwise have explained their reasoning quickly learned that this problem demanded no such thing. A one-word answer for each part is all that was called for. Worse yet, because I failed to require any record of thinking on the page, the majority of my students resolved to do no thinking at all in their minds. It became a guessing game, and one that they’re not particularly skilled at.

Algebra 1 Assessment, After

This year I’ve set about rewriting my Algebra 1 assessments. They’re not perfect, and I’ll probably want to run them through a revision cycle again next year (and the year after, and so on forever), but there are a few questions here and there that strike me as significant improvements over their original counterparts.

Here’s what the corresponding question looks like on the current Topic 1 assessment:

Just below #2 I ask whether multiplication is associative (#3) and whether division is associative (#4). It’s immediately more demanding, doesn’t let students off the hook, doesn’t tempt them to do less thinking than they might naturally do, and gives me a fairly clear sense of whether students know which property is which, and which operations are commutative/associative.

In writing this up, the only immediate change that I’d like to make to the question is to throw a third sentence in between the two already there. “Explain.” It’s implied, but it would be nice to state it explicitly. So then I would have something like, “Is addition commutative? Explain. Support your answer/explanation with an example.”

Wrap Up

So, was that terribly longer than a minute? Or was it simply a terrible minute? Let me know what you think about this feature in general and/or this question comparison in particular in the comments.

Cheers!

Assessment Update: SBG in Algebra 1

With the start of a new semester, several of the assessment ideas that have been floating around in my brain are making their way into my classroom. I thought I might break my recent and unintended blogging silence (eleven weeks!) by sharing some of what I’m thinking, some of what I’ve done, and some of what I hope to do. Here goes…

The Beginning: Algebra 1

In August 2011, inspired by this post from Dan Meyer, I introduced SBG into my Algebra 1 class. There were some bumps along the way, but overall I was thrilled with the change. I loved being able to answer student and parent questions along the lines of, “What can Johnny do to improve his grade,” with specific comments about strengths, weaknesses, and areas to attack. (Of course, the improve-your-grade-by-improving-your-understanding-and-then-demonstrating-this-improved-understanding is already a huge upgrade over the days of old when kids—and sometimes parents—would ask/beg for extra credit. But I digress…)

I’m somewhat embarrassed of the quality of the assessments I wrote then, but it was a start. For anyone brave enough to look at that first wave of SBG assessments I wrote, enter at your own risk. (BTW, I’ve abandoned my favorite app in the history of the world—Dropbox—for the new kid on the block—Copy—because of the oodles and oodles of free space, and the seemingly comparable features to Dropbox. After a few referrals I’m at 80GB of free storage. If you’re interested in signing up—15GB + 5GB for using the referral link—go here.)

This year I’ve decided that my assessments need a major improvement in quality, so I’ve set about to accomplish as much of that as I’m capable of (while still creating resources and preparing for all of my other classes). The I’m-totally-not-finished-yet-but-have-a-look-if-you-want second wave of Algebra 1 SBG assessments live here.

I’ll continue writing new assessments for those 24 topics—the same topics I sketched out in August 2011—through the rest of this semester. Originally I just had a list of topics; since then I’ve added “I can…” statements to the course outline. However, I’ll scrap both of those in the next year or two (even with the “new-and-improved” assessments I’m writing this year) as we transition to an integrated Common Core sequence. I expect some of the topics, lessons, and assessments will slide into our new Grade 8 course, while others will make their way into the high school’s Math 1 course. Nevertheless, one major and lasting benefit I’ll carry forward from this Algebra 1 SBG experience is (I hope) a better understanding of how to write decent assessments. At the very least, I’m learning to identify what I don’t like about many of the assessments I’ve written.

Next Up

That’s all for now. I’ll write again soon about “Phase 1.5,” my experience applying SBG to AP Calculus AB midway through the 2012-2013 school year.

CCSSM Grade 7 Concepts and Skills List

TL;DR

CCSSM Grade 7 Concepts and Skills List

Earlier this year I described my schedule, assumptions, goals, and game plan as they all relate to my school’s transition to CCSSM. Here’s an update on that process.

Good Distractions

I haven’t spent as much time on this task as I originally intended in the first twelve weeks of school. I originally thought about 95% of my prep time would be devoted to the CCSSM transition project. Instead, about 60% of that time has been dedicated to helping teachers integrate technology into their classrooms in meaningful ways.

The emphasis has been on students using technology to create and collaborate, rather than students watching teachers use technology, or students using technology simply to receive/consume content.

It’s been an enjoyable experience, one in which I’ve learned a lot as we make mid-stream adjustments to our in-house technology training plan. We recently put together a “Technology Leadership Team” with teachers from various grade levels and disciplines throughout our K-12 school. With this team in place, I have an opportunity to shift a bit more of my attention back to the CCSSM transition.

Adjusted Expectation

My original goal was to transition our entire 7-12 math program to Common Core next year. After some wise words from the other member of the math department, and an okay from our superintendent, we’ve decided to transition middle school in 2014-2015 and high school in 2015-2016.

First Fruits

It’s only a tiny piece of the whole puzzle, but this week I finished writing a CCSSM Grade 7 Concepts and Skills List.

If you open up the document, you’ll find a number of comments I’ve written in the margin describing my rationale for certain things, my uncertainty about others, and my game plan for (in many cases) weaving content throughout the course (rather than forcing a set of topics—e.g., geometry—to stay confined to a particular time period).

I hope you’ll add your own comments and questions. Let me know if you want a duplicate copy of the document so you can put your own spin on sequence, emphasis, etc.

Next Steps

In the next couple of weeks I plan to do the same thing for our CCSSM Grade 8 course. At that point I’ll turn my attention to writing brief, SBG-style assessments for each topic on the lists.

Further down the to-do list: Performance assessments for the big ideas in each course (we’ll probably start with one per quarter) and rich anchor tasks/lessons for each unit.

Much further down the to-do list: Individual lessons/activities/tasks/practice to fill out each unit.

And beyond that… The same process for our high school courses.

CCSSM Statistics and Probability Workshop (Links, Twitter, and Slides)

Slides

Simple slide stealing in three flavors: Keynote, PDF, PowerPoint.

Feedback Form

Attended the workshop? Let me know what you thought.

Links

Estimation 180

http://www.estimation180.com/

A great resource for developing students’ number sense, estimation skills, unit sense, and ability to explain their reasoning in concise, specific ways.

Statistics Learning Centre

http://learnandteachstatistics.wordpress.com/

A blog all about teaching and learning statistics from ~~Middle Earth~~ New Zealand.

Illustrative Mathematics

http://www.illustrativemathematics.org/

A free online source of rich tasks illustrating the Common Core mathematics standards.

Progressions (Tools for the Common Core)

General website: http://commoncoretools.me/

Progressions category: http://commoncoretools.me/category/progressions/ or http://ime.math.arizona.edu/progressions/

HS Statistics and Probability document: Here

Emergent Math’s PrBL Curriculum Maps

http://emergentmath.com/my-problem-based-curriculum-maps/

“Geoff Krall Combs The Internet For Lesson Plans So You Don’t Have To”

Twitter

Join Twitter, follow some of these people, and check out their blogs.

@druinok (blog)

@gwaddellnvhs (blog)

@jkindred13 (blog)

@approx_normal (blog)

@mathteacher24 (blog)

@StatsMonkey (blog)

Solved the Student Engagement Problem Yet? Me Neither.

Find yourself thinking about student engagement in your classroom? Me too. If you haven’t read Dan Meyer’s summertime pieces on engagement, you should.

Here they are:

The Unengageables

The Unengageables, Ctd.

P.S. The links and comments are worth their weight in gold.

Absolute Value Problem of the Month

Last summer I stumbled across the Problem of the Month corner of the Inside Mathematics website. I love the idea of a schoolwide problem with multiple levels of difficulty, since students of varying abilities at multiple grade levels can join in at the “low floor” of Level A and push themselves as far as they can toward the “high ceiling” of Level E. (If you’ve never seen the Level A to Level E progression, here’s a sample.)

My Problem of the Month/Week/Whatever

In the spirit of these problems, I’ve created my own sequence of Level A to Level E challenges involving absolute value.

The sequence was originally inspired by a problem I saw in a student’s SAT review book. The SAT problem is more or less the same as Level D, and seems like an appropriate challenge for my Algebra 2 students. We’re about to begin our study of equations involving absolute value in my Algebra 1 class, so I wanted to adapt the problem (by “lowering the front of the of the ramp”) so it would be more accessible to that group of students. I also wanted to push the problem a bit further for my more advanced Algebra 2 students.

Here’s what I was thinking at each level.

Level A

Find one value of $x$ for which $|3x-17|>x$

Before we worry about efficient methods for solving equations involving absolute value, I want my students to develop their reasoning abilities with equations (or in this case, inequalities) involving absolute value. The expression on the left is a type I’ve seen hundreds of times, but the inequality as a whole (in particular, the inclusion of a variable on the right side of the inequality) is a new twist for me as a teacher.

I anticipate some struggle here as students become familiar with the context, but once they realize what’s going on (and start plugging in various values of x to test them one at a time) I expect they’ll find success fairly quickly. In fact, if students start with integers (as I image they will) there are only four that will not satisfy the inequality.

Level B

Find one value of $x$ for which $|3x-17|<x$

After I’ve baited them into the problem with an early dose of open-ended success, students will turn to a very similar problem with far fewer solutions. However, the method most students use to attack Levels A and B will likely be the same, so this second stage demands perseverance more than new methods.

Level C

Find four more values of $x$ for which $|3x-17|<x$

If students have been thinking only in terms of integers, this third level will force them to break out of that. I anticipate comments along the lines of “This is impossible! I’ve already found all four solutions!” and I look forward to hearing the next part of that conversation in each group, as students wonder aloud (or ask me directly), “Are we allowed to use non-integers?” (To which I’ll reply: “Did I say you couldn’t?”)

Level D

Describe all the values of $x$ for which $|3x-17|<x$

Now we’re pushing toward the idea of an interval, and possibly the use of more efficient techniques to solve for the endpoints. Students may have a head start here based on what they stumbled across in Level C.

Level E

Describe all the values of $x$ for which $|ax-b|<x$

If any of my students race through Levels A-D, I want to have a challenge that may hold their attention for a bit longer. Maybe they learned something about the relationship between 3, 17, and the interval endpoints in Level D. This fifth challenge will push them to describe that relationship with clarity.

Disclaimer

I haven’t used this yet with my students, though I will very soon. And I’m not sure I’ll get the whole school on board this round with an untested problem. For all I know, this could be too easy, to difficult, too boring, or too something else. I’ll post an update after we’ve explored the problem. Feel free to drop a comment on the quality of the problem, or ideas for improving it (whether you use the problem with your students or not).

Credit To Desmos

With that disclaimer aside, I should mention that without Desmos I wouldn’t have created this sequence of absolute value inequality challenges. When I saw this problem I was feeling rather lazy. So instead of breaking out pencil and paper I just graphed the two expressions in Desmos:

Problem solved! Any x-value between 4.25 and 8.5 will satisfy the original inequality ( $|3x-17|<x$ ).

But then I wondered about changing the parameters. Time for sliders!

Click to be transported to a land of dynamic slider action!

Anyway, that’s how Level E was born. I still had to lower the ramp at the front of the problem, so that’s where Levels A-C came from.

I’d love to hear what you think. If you have anything to share, drop a line in the comments!

Mistakes, Radicals, Rational Exponents, and Partitioning?

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A strange thing happened a few days ago. One of my Algebra 1 students stopped by Thursday afternoon to receive extra help on a topic. (That in itself is not the strange part.) He pulled up a chair, we discussed what he had been struggling with, and from that I typed out a review handout for him to work on while I helped another student from another class.

I asked him to complete as many of the problems as he could during the next 10 minutes or so. Then we’d chat about what he got right, what he got wrong, and what he skipped. A little while later he had this:

Trouble with Radicals, But Not with Rational Exponents?

When we first sat down, I figured he would have trouble with rational exponents. Nearly all of my students (this year and in the past) who struggle with this topic have almost no trouble with square roots in radical form, some trouble with cube roots in radical form, and (if they have any issues at all) massive problems with rational exponents.

This student’s struggle was more or less the exact opposite of what I typically see. He had trouble with radicals (square roots, cube roots, anything in radical form), and almost no trouble with rational exponents. (My conjecture on #21 is that the times table in his brain has a blank spot at 8 times 8.)

Concept vs Notation

The evidence clearly shows that this student doesn’t have a conceptual deficiency. Instead, his struggle is with…

@mjfenton @mpershan Notation, notation, notation. 🙂

— Justin Lanier (@j_lanier) October 2, 2013

Remediation for notation is usually fairly simple. We talked for a minute or two about how radicals (unknown and unfamiliar to him) relate back to rational exponents (known and familiar). Several minutes later, he came back with this:

Things are looking up, even if they’re still not perfect.

Shifting My Approach

This exchange has me rethinking the direction of the conceptual/notational connection I’ve been trying to draw out for years. In working with an expression raised to the 1/2, I’ve always angled our conversations toward (and silently rejoiced inside when a student shouts):

I treated square roots like the native language, the most helpful representation, and rational exponents as this foreign thing that needs to be converted back to familiar territory.

It’s true that students are more familiar with radicals (at least in my experience with middle schoolers), but I’m quickly starting to believe that rational exponents are dramatically more informative when it comes to thinking conceptually (and when it comes to working procedurally).

August, Every Year

When students enter my classroom, our first discussion about exponents (which invariable happens within the first couple weeks of school) goes more or less like this:

Me: What does $2^{3}$ mean?

Students: Eight!

Me: No, not “What is its value?” What does it mean, what does it represent?

Students: Oh (why didn’t you say so). 2 times itself three times.

Me: What?! You mean…

$2$
(two)

$2\times 2$
(times itself once)

$2\times 2\times 2$
(times itself a second time)

$2\times 2\times 2\times 2$
(times itself a third time)

Me: There. 2 times itself three times. Wait… That’s…

Students: No, you got it wrong. That’s 2 to the fourth!

Me: But you said…

Students: Yeah, but we didn’t mean…

Me: Grrr…

TWO MINUTE TIME WARP…

Me: And that’s why it’s more useful to say it like that. So, how would you state the meaning of this: $10^{4}$

Students (in unison, with a three-part harmony): Four factors of 10!

Me: Perfect!

I want them to express powers this way for a number of reasons. At the very least, saying it the other way is flat out wrong. But describing $a^{b}$ as “b factors of a” has proven immensely useful in developing properties of exponents (which, for what it’s worth, I don’t hate as much as many in the MTBoS, probably because I’m easily entertained, and maybe also because my simple brain enjoys finding and justifying simple patterns).

Okay, So… What Exactly Are We Talking About?

By now, of the 12 people who started reading this post, and the three who are still reading, at least two of you are wondering: What does this have to do with rational exponents and your struggling student?

Well, several weeks ago in Algebra 1 (the above student’s class) we had our first discussion of rational exponents. As usual, I was trying to elicit from them the idea that “to the 1/2” can be thought of as “square root,” and so on.

But a few students—bless their little hearts—wondered: Why?

And another student—bless his heart—applied our beloved “b factors of a” phrasing to come up with this:

What would that even mean? I knew, and you know, too, because we’ve seen this movie before (or at least accidentally read a spoiler in some blog comment or Facebook news feed overpopulated by comments you were never interested in reading in the first place; I digress).

But my students didn’t have half a clue what “half a factor of…” would mean, and I was on the edge of my seat to see where they would take this. (Correction: I was standing. But I fully expect I was standing on the edge of wherever it was that I was standing.)

What They Saw

After a few more minutes of discussion, here’s what they saw and (more or less) how they described it.

If you need to find “some number” to the 1/2, write the number as two identical factors. Then “take” one of them. That’s your answer.
If you need to find the value of “some number” to the 1/3, write the number as three factors of the same number. Then “take” one of them. That’s your answer.

What I Wondered

I’d never have a conversation on rational exponents take that turn, so now I was curious… What would my students do with other rational exponents? The next day, on their Topic 2 assessment, I invited students to attempt two challenge problems on the back:

Find the value of $16^{1/4}$
Find the value of $100000^{1/5}$

The results were mixed, but a majority of those who attempted the problems were spot on. Here’s a sample:

I guess in some ways this doesn’t differ much from the classic treatment:

$16^{1/4}=2$ because $2^{4}=16$

But it somehow strikes me as different, as offering more potential for extension, at least in the form my student wrote it on the review sheet that inspired this post. And now I’m wondering another thing. Would these same students—without any additional instruction from me—be able to evaluate $8^{2/3}$ ?

My guess is some of them could, and I expect they’d treat it like this:

Write 8 as three identical factors, take 2

In fact, I’d wager that with a brief class discussion, most of them would be equipped to handle any of these:

Write 16 as four identical factors, take 3

Write 100 as two identical factors, take 3

Write 4 as two identical factors, take 5

Write 100,000 as five identical factors, take 3

For My Next Trick, I’ll Be Misusing the Word Partition

This idea of partitioning a number into identical factors and selecting a portion of those factors feels an awful lot like multiplying whole numbers by rational numbers:

Write 20 as four identical terms, take one

Write 21 as three identical terms, take two

Write 8 as two identical terms, take five

I don’t know if you can use partition in that sense (the factors sense), but I couldn’t shake the notion that these two problem types have a lot more in common than I ever thought before. (Maybe now that I’ve rambled all over the page I’ll be able to get some sleep at night. Or was it the kids waking up in the middle of the night that was disturbing my sleep… Too tired to remember.)

Your Thoughts?

I’m a little bit nervous about hitting “publish” on this one. I feel like there are four likely responses to the post—for anyone persistent enough to ramble (as in walk) through to the end of these ramblings (as in babble):

Thanks for blathering, but I have no idea what you just said.
Thanks for nothing, everyone already knew everything you said.
Thanks for trying, but I think you need a mathematical intervention to work out some of your own misconceptions.
Thanks for sharing, that’s a nifty connection. I might use it one day with my own students.

If you made it this far, let me know which of those reactions best describes your own. Or go off script and drop a more thoughtful comment.

Either way, thanks for playing!

Math 753 • Session 6

Summary

Another big evening of sharing resources and challenges created by the teachers, plus further exploration of Dave Youngs’ Fascinating Triangle mathematical microworld.

Resources

Slides

Two flavors: PDF, Keynote

MATHCOUNTS

Workout 2. Official handbook is here. This evening we’ll spend a little more time than we usually do working on problems and sharing solutions.

Estimation 180

Days 51-60, here we come! In particular, we’ll look at Day 51 (soda capacity) and Day 52 (glass vase capacity). The rest of the challenges from Days 51-60 are here:

Just like last week, after completing these two official challenges, teachers will share the estimation challenges they created for homework.

Course Themes

Arithmetic to algebra (#1) and four representations (#5).

The Fascinating Triangle

Here’s the game plan for today:

Visual Patterns

A third week of sharing our own Visual Patterns, followed by a journey into two (basic) quadratic patterns (which we didn’t actually have time for last week):

Big Ideas in Algebra

Last week we ran out of time (again) and didn’t have an opportunity to discuss the Session 3 reading assignment, or the various comments teachers in the class left on the Session 3 post. We’ll carve out some time for that discussion in Session 6.

Assignments

We take a break from reading and “create your own” assignments to focus nearly all of our attention on the Fascinating Triangle. In addition to spending another hour or two delving into one or more extensions, teachers will write a 1-2 reflection on the exploration process, plus “appendices” with “scratch work selections” of their explorations and findings.

Google’s 15th Birthday

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First Period

Near the end of today’s AP Calculus lesson, I fired up a new web browser and intended to type desmos.com. We just discovered the product rule and were applying our newfound knowledge to this:

I accidentally ended up at google.com and saw this:

Well, we had to play. So we did. 🙂 And if you’ve already played a bit yourself, you’ll know it didn’t take long for us to get hooked.

It also didn’t take long for me to start wondering about how this could be turned into something mathematical. I mean, student engagement (with the game, at least) was instantaneous. Could I somehow leverage that into an engaging activity?

I think I can. In fact, I think I can turn this into something worth exploring in Algebra 1, Algebra 2, Precalculus, Statistics, and even Calculus. All I really need: more data.

Second Period

During second period I work primarily on organizing/building/developing curriculum for our math department (all two of us!). I also oversee a few students’ independent study coursework (mostly in AP Statistics, plus a few in Honors Precalculus… highly capable students whose schedules didn’t work with the time we regularly offer the course).

I grabbed a few kids as they walked in the door and pointed them toward Google on their laptops. As they began playing, I started working on a data collection handout and formulating how I might turn this into an activity.

About ten minutes later we had this handout.

Here’s how it works:

Partner up
Go to google.com (though after September 27, you’ll probably have to go to google.com/doodles instead)
Play a few practice games
Once you’re familiar with the game, decide who will smash and who will record (of course, in fairness to your fellow man, you really ought to alternate these roles every few games)
Learn the attack styles (All Out Attack, Delayed Attack, and Over the Top). Details for all of these are on the handout (link above, image below, video far below).
Select an attack style, and attack!
While the smasher is smashing,the recorder will do his or her best to record the total number of candies that have spilled out after each of the 10 swings.
Ideally, students will play a game with each attack style (there’s room for one of each in the data table), and then trade roles.
(Since the numbers scroll/animate almost continuously—if you’re not terrible at the game—it’s pretty difficult to accurately record the number of candies for All Out Attack. I asked students to make their best estimate and most seemed able to handle it.

I then printed a few copies, and a few bits of data started rolling in.

Third Period

A full lesson in Precalculus (third period) meant no room for messing around with Google’s birthday doodle. Too bad. Maybe next week (if the doodle is still accessible, which I believe it will be).

Fourth Period

I carved out three minutes at the end of Algebra 1 (fourth period) to introduce the game to students, distribute copies of the handout, and invite students to play with a friend or family member at home. I have no idea if they’ll take me up on this. I imagine quite a few students will play this evening and tell me about their highest scores on Monday. And when I ask if they recorded any data… This.

Fifth Period

We were supposed to work on corrections for our Chapter 2 Assessments. But we didn’t. We can do that Monday.

Today? Today was a day for data collection.

I thought students would need laptops since… you know… keyboard… space bar. As it turns out, Google’s one step (well, maybe more than one step) ahead of me. The game works on smartphones!

Me: “Okay kids, if you have a smartphone, tablet, or laptop, take it out. Go to Google.com. And in the name of mathematics, hit that piñata!”

Students, without hesitation: “Okie dokie.” (Paraphrasing.)

Lunch

I have no idea if this will be useless, but I made this video at lunch to introduce the problem. I was pushing to get it ready in time for my eighth period Precalculus class, so it’s pretty simple.

Eighth Period

We wrapped up our lesson with about ten minutes left in class. I played the video (above), asked students to pair up, take out a device, and get cracking. They obliged.

Now It’s Your Turn

Find a class, friend, spouse, neighbor, or stranger.

Play the game. Use all three attack styles, several times each

Record the data.

Send it to me. (There’s an awkward google form here, or you can just email me photos of the completed handout: mjfenton at gmail dot com.)

What’s Next from Me?

If I even get a little bit of data, I’ll turn this into an activity or two for every class I can in the 7th through 12th grade sequence. I can already think of a few tasks for Algebra 1 through Calculus, but would love to hear your ideas if you have any. What should we do with all of this data? Drop a line in the comments and let me know.

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