Math – Jake Miller

Strategies for “Sticky” Vocab Learning!

Header Image for Post, contains post title and a picture of a dictionary

If you could be a fly on the wall of an average classroom, it’d be pretty likely that you’d hear something like “Don’t forget to study your vocab words tonight!” or “Remember to review your flashcards tonight!”

While there’s been a move away from the rote learning of yesteryear, most educators agree that having a firm grasp of content area vocabulary is still an important piece to the learning process. I think that there are two important goals for learning vocabulary in content areas: (1) retention of the words (sticky learning) and (2) application of the words.

In Episode 34 of the Educational Duct Tape Podcast, I spoke with Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, author of Stop Talking, Start Influencing, about both of these goals.

A week after that episode came out, I was joined by dozens of “Duct Tapers” in the #EduDuctTape Twitter Chat to discuss the podcast episode, including these two goals.

Below are some strategies that you can use in your classrooms to increase your students’ ability retain and apply their vocabulary learning. Some come from the chat and others come from the episode. Continue reading Strategies for “Sticky” Vocab Learning!

SketchUp on Chromebooks!

When my friend Dave Ternent and I started teaching a middle school STEM course back in 2012, one of the first tools that we selected for the course was SketchUp.

SketchUp is a free 3D modeling computer program made by Trimble and, for a while, owned by Google. It was the perfect introduction to 3D-modeling, architecture and engineering for middle schoolers: powerful, but relatively easy to learn.

After seeing the awesome Matt England present at a local tech conference about his use of SketchUp with middle schoolers we even had information from someone who had used it about how to best introduce it. Matt was kind enough to share his resources during the session.

Based on Matt’s information, we had our students make shapes with certain dimensions as they learned to use it (see image). After that, they moved up to creating a 3-hole putt-putt (mini-golf) course that fit within a certain area (see image). They got very creative with those courses, which is great, but you could also extend this to tons of curriculum standards! Surface area, Roman architecture, volume, locations from literature, measurement, earthquake-resistant houses, perimeter, developing cities . . . I could go on and on. But I stopped using SketchUp. Why? It didn’t work on Chromebooks.

Until recently! SketchUp is now available on the web, which means that you can use it on Chromebooks! Check out the animated GIF below showing me using SketchUp. Imagine the possibilities for students!

(Note: this post previously linked to an “old” post from SketchUp for Schools. I updated the link to point to a newer post on 9.12.2020)

SketchUp Shapes — In this activity, students had to create certain shapes based on provided descriptions. i.e., Create a right triangle with a 5-foot hypotenuse.

Another student’s 3-hole putt-putt course, complete with a small shed for the employee & storage

Paint Roller Tool in Google Sheets

I’m a big fan of the Paint Roller (Paint Format) tool in the gSuite platform. I’ve posted before about using it in Google Docs, as well as in Google Slides. I probably use it most often, though, in Google Sheets. I love a nice, organized Google Sheet and this tool helps a lot with that. My favorite part about it is that it even applies to number formatting (i.e., decimal places, date format, currency, etc.). Check it out in the animated GIF below!

Equations in Google Docs

Math & Chemistry teachers use Google Docs, too! And so do other content areas and teachers who integrate math and sophisticated science across content areas. And, for those peeps, there is the ability to add equations and other “mathy” symbols to Google Docs. Just click Insert > Equation.

A quick note, before we get to the GIF: Some educators will tell you that this tool could be better. And for people looking to use this functionality regularly, they’re probably right. In that case you may want to consider other tools (equatIO is a great one). But for people who just use it occasionally, I think the Equation Editor is a’okay.

Screencastify, Paper & Math: Spin It Around, Write It Down, Explain with Sound!

This post originally appeared on the Screencastify blog, here.

We all know how important it is for students to demonstrate

their understanding of a particular subject or problem by “showing their work.” If your students are using tablets, there are a number of great interactive whiteboard recording apps that allow students to write with a stylus, annotate images and provide audio explanations.

But what about the large student population who are using Chromebooks, not tablets? Some new Chromebooks have touch screens and a small number are ready to roll with Android apps, but for the majority of our students, this type of recording feature is nowhere in their near future. And it’s a great feature! What’s better than telling a student to “show their work”!? Telling them to “explain their work” or, better yet, narrate it.

As an educational technology advocate and problem-solver, I am always looking for a hack. And, here’s my hack for this. Tell your students: “click on the Screencastify extension, select Cam, spin the computer around, aim it at a piece of paper, starting writing or drawing and explain away.” In short, spin it around, write it down, explain with sound.

Check out my hack in action in the video below!

CopyDown Add-On

Years ago, as a STEM teacher, I had my students build basswood bridges. We’d then test them by hanging weights from them. I’d submit the results to a Google Form, which would kick it to a Google Spreadsheet, where a formula was all set up to calculate the “Engineering Efficiency” (a measure that leveled the playing field between heavy, strong bridges and light, strong bridges). Unfortunately, formulas don’t automatically apply to the new rows created by new Form Submissions. I had to have a student manually drag the formula down each time a new result was submitted.

Enter the CopyDown Add-On

I later discovered this wonderful little add-on. It automatically pulls that formula down to a each new form submission. No manual dragging necessary. This is super, super useful when your Form & Sheet are part of a bigger system that triggers other actions in other add-ons (i.e., autoCrat, formMule) that require those formulas.

Here’s a GIF of how it works, followed by a step-by-step guide to using it:

Set up your Google Form.
Open up the connected Spreadsheet.
Start with an initial form submission. You’ll need this in the next step.
Create your formulas in Row 2 (the row with your first submission).
Click Add-Ons and follow the steps to add CopyDown.
Click Add-Ons > CopyDown > CopyDown Settings.
Flip the switch to “On.”
Generally, I select to paste the results “as values” (otherwise it puts the formula itself into each cell which, if it’s a lengthy spreadsheet, will ultimately slow it down).
Save Settings.
Start gathering form submissions!

How Many Hot Dog Topping Combinations?

It was 6:12 PM EST. We were eating dinner on our deck. My sister messaged me. She had a very important question. Her and her colleagues were in a heated debate. Just how many topping combinations were there at Cleveland’s fun hot dog restaurants Happy Dog? I know, right? This is a big deal. Could I swoop in and save the day? Yes. Er, well, with the help of my trusty sidekick Google Sheets I could. (Excel would have worked, but what if I need to access the calculations on the go? or share them? Yup, I made the right choice. gSuite’s trusted cloud-based spreadsheet is the way to go here.)

So, I got the details. There are 50 toppings possible. No limits (you can do all 50, as my oldest son might choose) or minimums (0 toppings, as my youngest son prefers them, counts too). Variations on the dog (veggie? black bean!?) or bun (bleck, wheat?) were to be ignored.

I set right to it. I picked a trusty Google Sheets formula – Combin – and got to work. That formula deals with a common mathematics formula that finds the number of combinations of something. You need only know two things – how many possible things and how many are to be chosen (i.e., 50 toppings choose 1, 50 toppings choose 2, etc.). Now, don’t get this mixed up with permutations where order matters, because no one cares if you go peanut butter, sriracha, alien relish or alien relish, peanut butter, sriracha or … well … you get it.

COMBIN(n, k) where n is the size of the pool of objects to choose from and k is the number of objects to choose.

The rest is history. Check it out in the GIF below.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot to tell you the answer: 1,125,899,906,842,620 – one quadrillion, one hundred twenty-five trillion, eight hundred ninety-nine billion, nine hundred six million, eight hundred forty-two thousand, six hundred twenty combinations.

Side note to math teachers: I love how the numbers are symmetrical (i.e., there are 1,225 different 2-topping dogs and 1,225 different 48-topping dogs). Could be a great discussion with math students.

Now, here’s how I did it:

Screencasts in Math Class

Years ago, as a middle school math teacher, I had a dilemma. My 51 minute math classes had been shortened to 43 minutes. As any teacher knows, this is a big deal. After wrestling with a lot of ideas for how to handle here’s what I landed on:

Each day, during my planning period, I pressed record in a screencasting program called Jing, stepped up to the SmartBoard and went over the day’s homework as if my class was there. (I’m sure I looked like I had lost my marbles to any passerby) I did it quickly, forcing myself to keep it under 5 minutes. Any longer would mean 2 things: my assignment was too long and I was using to much class time to explain content that my students had already done.

The next day, I would play that video while taking attendance, checking to see who did their homework and meeting with any students who had been absent. This allowed me to combine two sets of things that I had previously done–going over the homework and doing the beginning of class teacher stuff–at once. It made up for those 8 lost minutes, and then some. Visit https://huntingtonhelps.com/center/cherry-hill to learn more modern techniques of making the most of your class.

Nowadays, my philosophies about homework and classrooms where all students are doing the same thing at the same time has changed, so I wouldn’t repeat this format. However, I think these recordings would still be valuable in a blended learning setting. When students finish certain assignments, they could view the videos to self-assess and learn more. Learning Management Systems and websites really open up the possibilities on this.

Here’s a sample of one of these videos:

Differentiation in Google Forms

Google Forms are great for collecting information and delivering assessments, but did you know Forms had some differentiation swag?

Yup, it’s true. Use “Go to Section Based on Answer” with a Multiple Choice question to have right answers and wrong answers lead to different sections. A general mockup of what this could look like, and steps for creating it, are below the GIF.

Steps:

Add a question with a correct answer and (at least one) wrong answer.
Add a section after that question.
Put your remedial content in that section. YouTube videos work well. You could even make your own video to put in there. You could also include a follow-up question to give your students a chance to re-assess.
Add a section after the remedial content.
Put your next content here. This is the section where students who got the correct answer will land. It will probably also be where you have students who completed the remedial step will land.
Go back to your initial question.
Select “Go to Section Based on Answer.”
Have the incorrect choice(s) go to the remedial section.
Have the correct choice(s) skip to the section after the remedial one.
Sit back and enjoy the differentiated learning experience!

General Layout:

Section 1: includes the question the differentiation is based on
Section 2: the remedial section – whatever content you want the students who got the previous question incorrect to see (video, explanation, follow-up question)
Section 3: the “next step” – the slide that the students with the correct answer jump to, also where the students with the incorrect answers land after completing the remedial section.

Note: you can add multiple levels of this in one Form, but it can get hard to manage. I once created a Form that went: Question 1, Remedial Video & Question 1a, Remedial Video & Question 1b, Question 2, Remedial Video & Question 2a, Remedial Video & Question 2b, etc. As you may guess, I had to create a complex flowchart to make sure I had everything jumping to the correct places.

Diagram Labeling Activities in Google Drawings

Google Drawings is a great place for quick, simple, visual activities. Add shapes to a diagram, tell students to double-click in those shapes and – voila – they’re text boxes!

Tips:

before sending them out to your kiddos, click into those shapes and format the text size so it’ll fit in the boxes.
Once you’ve made one box the way you like it, use command+d (ctrl+d on non-Mac) to duplicate it.
If this isn’t being used in Google Classroom, make it anyone with the link can view, copy the link, change the “edit” to “copy” and send it out.