I took the conic sections that my students made during our folding conics project and had students turn them into a Conics Patty Paper Poster Project. At least, this was what I planned to do. What I didn’t plan on was my toddler getting sick which caused me to miss an entire week of school …
Projects
One of the yearly activities I look forward to at my school is our annual Pinwheels for Peace celebration. Pinwheels for Peace is a school-wide, cross-curricular project that occurs every September. At my school, the project is headed up by by my super-talented, award-winning art teacher neighbor, Shelley Self. September 21st is International Day of …
I decided to use this folding conic sections project to kick off our conics unit in Pre-Calculus. Over the last few years, I have learned how to create parabolas, ellipses, and hyperbolas using paper folding. I decided that if I could figure out a way to create a circle using paper folding that I would …
This past year was my first year at my new school. Or, my old school if you consider the fact that I’m now teaching at the school I graduated from. My classroom is right next door to our super-talented art teacher, Shelley Self. She’s one of the most passionate and thoughtful educators I have ever …
It’s the last day of the semester before Christmas Break. This means that my day pretty much consists of waiting impatiently for students to take their semester tests followed by a frenzy of grading to get the tests into the gradebook. The Math Vocabulary Christmas Ornament Project We’re on a block schedule for our two …
This year, I decided to have my students complete a special Valentine’s project. I realized a few weeks ago that this is the first year since I started teaching where I forgot (oops!) to have my students celebrate National Letter Writing Week in January. To make up for it, I decided to have my students …
As part of our unit on energy in physical science, I had my students build Rube Goldberg machines. I never did figure out how to take really good pictures of their creations. 🙁 But, I want to post these pictures of what my students did come up with to remind me of how things …
I am so blessed to be married to a teacher because my husband doesn’t even bat an eye when I ask him to do things like buy me some six foot long pieces of pipe insulation at Lowe’s. Note to self: pick a non-windy day to try and bring this into the building! Shaun also …
Teaching a science class this year has me doing more projects than I’ve probably ever done in all my previous years as a math teacher. Setting up projects in an effective way has been a definite learning curve. This week, my students have been working on designing egg drop devices. I had students break into …
After years of seeing other teachers share pictures of the unit circle projects their students created, I decided to finally take the plunge. I assigned my trig students the task of creating a visual representation (2d or 3d) of the unit circle in lieu of a semester test in trigonometry. A nice side effect of …
I am so excited about these paper plate bohr models! One of our main goals in physical science is to recognize patterns in the periodic table based on valence electrons. Before we can jump to talking about valence electrons, we first need to just learn about the placement of electrons in the atom. After …
I recently assigned my physical science students a “Periodic Table License Plate Project.” This is not an original idea. I found it posted online here. Of course, I had to retype the instructions myself. As soon as I gave my students the instructions to the project, they began eagerly searching their periodic tables to see …
I assigned this significant figures poster project to my physical science students. The goal of this project was to get them used to changing between scientific notation and standard notation and to practice rounding numbers so that they have a certain number of significant figures. Students were told to choose a city, state, or country …
Looking for a fun way to have your geometry students practice writing conditional statements? Check out this If Then Statements Geometry Poster Project. I learned about this geometry project while attending a session titled “Taking the Practice Out of the Worksheet” by Judy Schwarz of Moore Public Schools at the Oklahoma Council of Teachers of …
Before Spring Break, I gave my statistics students the assignment to design their own survey projects. We spent well over a week on this project, but I definitely think it was time well spent. First, I gave my students this planning document to help them plan their survey projects. After students did this rough …
I’m excited to share my student’s creative wheel of theodorus projects which I turned into a Wheel of Theodorus Bulletin Board to decorate my high school math classroom. Every year, I have this plan to change my bulletin boards out throughout the school year. This year that happened only once. It also happened way back …
This is my first year teaching trig, so I’m figuring out a lot of things as I go. There is no textbook. No pacing guide. Just my own experiences with taking trig in high school to guide me. This is both exciting. And scary. My memories of high school trigonometry involve lots of graphing on …
I’m excited today to share the results of our confidence interval projects in statistics. This year, I had the privilege to teach a non-AP statistics class for high school juniors and seniors who had finished Algebra 2 and were not enrolled in upper level math courses through our local technology center. As a small high …
Any chemistry teacher will tell you that Mole Day is a big deal. Here are some Mole Day decorations and ideas that caught my attention while attending EdCamp Tulsa. I’ve already shared photos of an interesting looking Periodic Table of the Elements Project. When I took chemistry in high school, the most important day of …
I was really inspired by this Periodic Table of the Elements Project I saw in a classroom while attending Ed Camp Tulsa. Periodic Table of the Elements Project Each student was assigned a different element to research. Their research was summarized on a small rectangle of paper, and the pieces of paper were joined to …
I was super impressed by the tombstone projects I found in a science classroom while attending my very first EdCamp. I would love to implement this project in my classroom to help students study famous mathematicians. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with #edcampTULSA, but I’m definitely glad I went! I still need to …
Instead of giving my statistics students a semester test, I chose to assign them a response bias project based on one shared online by Josh Tabor. I was very impressed with how they carried out their projects. It was fun for me, as a teacher, to watch them grapple with results that didn’t necessarily match …
On the fourth day of school, I assigned my college algebra students the Real Number Line Project. My inspiration came from Matt Coaty’s Real Number Line Project. I even stole the name of the project. The previous day, I had introduced the real number system. We spent an entire class period classifying numbers as natural …
On the third day of school, I assigned every class but one a mathematician research project. They didn’t have to write a paper. Instead, they would take the information they researched and use it to decorate the cover of their interactive notebooks. Sounds like a great project, right? Well, it would have been a great …
Well, since I’m preparing to start my first year of teaching, I decided that I really needed to finish posting the last few projects I did during my student teaching. During my last week of student teaching, my cooperating teacher asked me to come up with a creative way to review some of the 8th …