2nd Annual Elementary Math Competition!
Today my high school hosted our district’s third annual city-wide elementary school math competition, featuring Math Olympiad style questions. Each high schooler was assigned to a team of four 5/6th graders to facilitate the competition, grade their work, report their scores, and get to know them. Overall, it was a great day!
FRQ Practice Ideas for Next Year
It’s that time of year again…my seniors have gone, I find myself with a bit more unstructured time during the school day, and my mind is flooded with ideas to try for next year and things to improve. I typically use my increased free time to look up ideas, read math blogs, and brainstorm alternate approaches, and I always find this process exciting and hopeful. Here is one of my AP Calculus goals for next year.
Rediscovered Diff. Eq. application problems + Seniors’ final days
There are only two days left with our wonderful seniors: Class of 2024! Their final exam projects are wrapping up and final grades are almost done. I also just came across two great Differential Equations applications problems that I had saved years ago and lost track of.
Trying out Google Calendar’s new ‘Appointment Schedule’ feature for ‘Oral Test Revisions’
I am trying out an alternative to my typical test corrections: oral exams where students solve new problems individually at the whiteboards in my room to demonstrate improved understanding and mastery of material they initially struggled with. I am using Google Calendar’s appointment schedule feature for the first time to allow students to book time slots. I am also having students complete a self-reflection first on their initial assessment.
2024 AP Calculus BC FRQ’s are here!
The moment we’ve been waiting for this week is here! The AP Calculus FRQ’s are available to view. Although the scoring rubrics won’t be available for several more months, I did out the problems and created my own solutions and predictions on point allocation. This post includes discussion of the questions.
A Very Relevant WSJ Article on Worldwide Population Crisis
Today I got home from work after doing a population versus food supply problem with my students, and I found this article as I was reading through the WSJ newspaper. SO relevant, interesting, and thought-provoking! Definitely bringing it into class to share.
What to do with Seniors after the AP Exam: 2024 version
Every year I think carefully about how I will spend my final week before my seniors graduate and leave. This year I a switching things up and creating a new final project for them to create: a letter to a future student with a Demos polar designed crest!
Castle Attack: Final AP Calculus Review Game
After years of intending to try this easy-to-use game, I finally used to today in AP Calculus and it went really well! In this post, I describe how I set up the game, how I will improve it for future use, and share the problems I used.
The FINAL AP Calculus lesson: Sigma <--> Integral notation
Once we reach the end of the year in AP Calculus BC and ALL content has been covered, I circle back to the beginning of Unit 6 and spend one class period focusing more on how to convert from sigma notation to integral notation. This is a great review of proper notation, limits, and Riemann sums. In this post, I share the resources that I use to help students master the technical notation.
One Year Blog Anniversary :)
Reflections on ONE YEAR of my blog: my own little corner of the internet!
A Polar Prom
Commentary on our seniors’ final weeks, including information on our school’s prom and discussion on how I introduced and taught polar functions in AP Calculus BC.
Listening to podcasts to keep myself grading…
Grading is a huge part of the teaching process, and I do a LOT of it. But…sometimes grading is just awful. I just realized something I can do to help myself!
More Radicals - Dealing with Extraneous Solutions
In this post, I discuss how I introduce extraneous solutions and how I have students explore them more with graphing calculators (although Desmos could be used as well). Resources are included.
Find Your Radical Error
A couple weeks ago, I gave my students a worksheet on things related to radicals. As I went through the sheets, I noticed a LOT of common errors; errors that I knew they shouldn’t be making. It could have been due to carelessness or rushing in some cases, but either way I wanted an effective way to address the errors. I decided to create a “Fix the Error” worksheet based directly on the errors I saw. Here is the original problem set and the “Find Your Error” worksheet, which worked out really well in class!
Using Newspaper Articles in Math Class
Reading the newspaper I something I enjoy doing after work when my kids are asleep or otherwise preoccupied. There are many excellent news articles to share with high school students to help them find the value in staying up-to-date with current events and relevant topics that are affecting their lives or will soon affect them after high school. My favorite, of course, are related to mathematics! Here are my of my favorite recent articles from the WSJ and my thoughts on incorporating them in the math classroom.
Polynomial Application Problems
Here are two of my favorite sets of Polynomial problems to be done at Vertical Whiteboards (VNPS). Each sets takes about two class periods.
How I ran March Math Madness
This is the first year I ran March Math Madness in my classes. Here is how I organized it, how I created my brackets, the problems sets I used, and the prizes I created.
Pi Day and Pie Day
Here’s how me and my students celebrated Pi day this year! Bingo, Pie, Math Team end-of-season party, and more.
AP Calculus Mock Exam time
In five week, students begin taking their AP exams! One of my favorite things our school does to get students ready is a full mock exam, which is a previously released practice exam from CollegeBoard. Here’s how it works at my school.
Trying Bingo + Open Middle for the win
Open Middle is a great website to find engaging, open-ended, critical thinking tasks for students, especially those who finish work early. Tomorrow I am trying out Bingo for the in my class FIRST time ever! Here’s my Bingo sheet.