Megan Golding

Get 4 rounds of Probability Trivia (PowerPoint | PDF). Set your Adobe Reader to scroll (View menu > Automatically Scroll or Shift + Ctrl + H). Put on music the kids might actually like. Then roam the room to help kids who struggle.

I’m not much at expounding, but if I had to list the benefits this little game has given me,

• used days before a unit test, I can identify areas the whole class needs to work on
• I have the freedom to work in very small groups with kids who struggle with a particular problem (because the game part kinda runs itself)
• the teamwork aspect means that kids justify their work – I hear the best arguments from kids who know they solved the problem right but their teammates are being meatheads
• the scrolling questions puts the kids under pressure to solve problems quickly

The question set covers counting principles (for number of outcomes), permutations & combinations, mutually exclusive events, dependent events, and conditional probabilities.

Bonus for Georgia teachers: this is Math 1, Unit 4 standards MM1D1 and MM1D2.

I wrote a full howto on Waterfall Trivia back in November.

Recently spotted on the Duarte Blog: Cheating by Charting. An excerpt from Spear’s Practical Charting Techniques. This stuff is genius.

Methinks this could be used in math class. “Hey kids, we’re going to play Corporate Spin today. You’ll hide a disappointing stat in a graph so the public doesn’t realize how much we’re polluting/raising prices/whatever.” (My, I didn’t realize I was feeling so cynical today…)

What time of day was this photo of the Washington Monument taken?

While writing this warm-up question, I came across the Sun or Moon Altitude/Azimuth Table page. Supply a location and a date and this page will tell you the angle of sun in the sky for any time of day. (Interesting side note: This photo of the Washington Monument could not have been taken between November and February because the sun never gets that high in the sky.)

I can already imagine all sorts of interesting extension problems based on this picture but for now I will keep it simple: my students need to practice the inverse trig functions.

(Props to my colleague Annie Sun for the idea for this game)

The goal is to get as close to 21 + 21i without going over.

Georgia Performance Standard MM2N1(b,c)

The math department at the high school where I teach is big into stations. If the concept is new to you, here’s the lowdown: On a station day, several learning centers are set up around the room and students circulate among them. Montgomery County schools in Maryland has published details.

From what I’ve seen, stations are particularly good at providing opportunities for reteaching and practice, in addition to acceleration.

The key here is that stations are useful as a differentiation tool. According to the MCPS folks, you should use assessment data to break students into groups. Not all students will visit all stations and time at the teacher station will differ based on the data.

I’ve applied stations a few times this year and have learned a few things:

• how incredibly important it is to model the concept to the class
• you must give explicit instructions in the stations where students work independently
• I like using assessment data to divide students
• give students their station assignments during warmup
• students need a way to check their work in the stations (I’ve posted solutions on the back of index cards taped to the wall)
• you need an assessment tool or record of students’ work in the stations — they need to turn something in. I’m thinking a culminating question at each station that has no solution posted makes a lot of sense.

Your time spent in planning stations is huge. Not only must you plan approximately three activities but you must also provide differentiation for each group. This could mean upwards of six times the work in advance. This time is so worth it! Do I even need to say it beats the heck out of lecture or drill-and-kill practice?