My district has been working to level out the disparity in Red vs. Grey days in our A/B block schedule (largely due to testing and snow days), to the point where this week I had a singleton Red day. Prime opportunity to give them the same kind of project or activity my Grey Day geometry kids got a bunch of in February.
But what to do with them?
May is bearing down and final exams coming with it and this felt like a chance to slip in some review. And I took it. But I didn’t want a Kuta worksheet, and I just haven’t built the class culture this year where I could spring a Three-Act on them on a random day in late April.
Fortunately last week we had a chance to talk a little bit with my kids about how the distractors get built on standardized tests. (Most of them just took the ASVAB a couple weeks earlier so that hit just right). I’ve had an activity for years where my kids make all the distractors for a multiple choice question. Maybe they make their own semester review?
I group them up, they develop the question and the wrong answers (along with the right answer, obvi), and then dump everything into a spreadsheet I can upload to Quizizz and use as a review activity. Maybe even on the E-Day coming up for Election Day?
Let’s go.
But first, a decision: Where to collect the three wrong/one right answers, and the images for the problems (since we are doing triangles just about every problem comes with a diagram).
Took a minute of rolling it around in my head but I finally settled on making this an Iron Chef. Get everybody in a group working together in the same slide deck on a single problem. The last slide contained directed them to a GForm (I tweaked the Joe Marquez template available here) where they could enter their question, four answer options, select the correct answer, and indicate the time limit for students to work the problem in Quizizz. The Quizizz people blogged about the steps a while ago, and embedded a Marquez explainer video:
I tried to do this on the fly during remote learning last year and it blew up in my face. This time around was much smoother, mostly because I didn’t try to upload and launch the quiz right during a class while my students were on a five minute Brain Break.
And I feel like we had a hit on our hands.
I wish I could say that I’m such a great teacher and this is such a compelling activity that the kids couldn’t wait to do right triangle trig and other second semester topics but in reality it was the right activity on the right day (a Friday before an “amnesty day” for making quiz corrections and doing makeup work) and the kind of activity that has a low barrier to entry, plus strength in numbers and they didn’t have to listen to me talk, or take notes.
Regardless of the reasons my kids were super-engaged. Even kids who adamantly refuse to do any kind of math most days were in. I was able to sit with each group and (as needed) help navigate them to possible “common student errors” they could use to develop their distractors. They got familiar with common missteps. Some groups even had kids (good-naturedly) arguing over who got to make the wrong answers (“I’m good at getting problems wrong!”). But in four classes we got 16 good usable quiz items (discarding duplicates) and I added some “fun questions” to make an even 20.
Then I turned around and made the Quizizz a small extra credit opportunity on the Amnesty Day and the E-Day. (One of my kids said, “wait, you’re making us do your work for you? Unpaid?” They slay me.)
So to recap, the benfits:
- Student engagement
- Digging deeper into process of working triangle problems
- Group work
- Directions were easy to follow (not our first Iron Chef rodeo)
- Review (and several kids told me we should start building in finals review even as soon as now because “we forgot how to do all this stuff!”)
A win-win. I love turning problems inside-out. One of my teacher connects on twitter was posting the other day about the vibe in her class when she gives her kids “un-photomath-able” problems. That’s what I’m looking for, as often as I can. I think this one qualifies.
Oh, and then this happened:
Pretty much floated home after that. Cloud Nine moment. And one of the EduProtocols authors chimed in as well.
Got plenty of good feedback (the 21st century connected teacher kind – retweets) from my building and district admin on the activity as well. I love that we’re on the same page when it comes to seeking out methods to engage our kids.
And: One month to go. It’s always good to enter May on an up note.
Tweaking For No Reason 