Fun...in the classroom? - 10 Bridging Maths Trigonometry

This term my 10 Bridging Maths Class is doing Trigonometry and Measurement.  I usually find that Trig has good, real world contexts, and measurement is nice and visual, but I still knew, when I was sitting at home the other day trying to plan for my first lesson with them, that it was going to be a struggle.

They don't have quite this same attitude towards it for some reason.

Our first lesson was a double, so I did some actually educational reading and tried to find something to jazz things up.  I found this video (below) about how there's no such thing as being bad at maths, you're probably just lazy (assumedly putting aside legitimate learning disabilities or imbalances in the brain), and I found that to be quite effective, more than I'd expected (hint: I don't necessarily expect a lot, students from year 9 to 11 are pretty apathetic).

I managed to get quite a few students to admit that they don't really put the effort in that they could when I explained that I am there to help them bridge the gap between them doing their best, and what they want to achieve.  I pointed out that for some people they might still be working on that bridge next year, but no matter how big the gap they're trying to fill, it can only work if they're putting in their best effort and have the best attitude they can, or else it's like building a bridge on a bad foundation.

Many students then put their hand up when I asked if they wanted to start fresh, and try and put in their best effort this term.  It was rather touching.  I nearly cried.

Once I had them focussed, I introduced out topic with this not-as-lame-as-I-was-expecting video which the students found amusing and I felt the need to dance to.  I wish this school's math (it's in America, so it's math, not maths) department would make more, but I have the feeling it's not going to happen, even though their videos are actually really good!

See?  You were expecting it to be lame, and it was actually pretty good.

I'm actually planning to use this throughout the Trig part of the unit to help them remember the sides and formulae.

With my bridging class I always spend the first few lessons doing foundational processes that will be relevant later on.  The digital copy of the textbook has worksheets related to 'review' questions at the start of the chapter, these are great to get the students warmed up in the first week, and to remind them that homework is actually important and that I expect them to do it.  I did an activity with them to get them practising Pythagoras' Theorem.  I actually came across the idea on a teaching resource site...but they claimed it took them 5 hours to make and it was for actual Trig questions, not Pythagoras, so I made my own in under an hour.

A this point I hadn't thought to check the difference between 'practice' and 'practise', shh.

9 Pythagoras problem were stuck on the walls around the room, and after I showed them 2 quick examples, they had to wander around and solve them at their own pace.  The first three to finish got a chocolate, the next 2 got bonus points.  It went really well, and a student who has had maximised bad attitude all year tried her hardest and didn't give up when she made a mistake and even got bonus point.  It was rather touching.  I nearly cried.

Narrative Structure and Story Balance - Creating Life

My husband recently used an activity I designed a few years ago to teach Year 8s narrative structure and the balance of events and details in a story.  It uses this handout to illustrate the idea, and students seem to react well to it and it really clicks with them.  My husband had great success, and I felt a bit chuffed, so it seemed like an activity worth sharing.

Kids like colouring in the face and stuff, but they need to leave space for notes

So this works two-fold: one, it opens up discussion regarding the elements of narrative structure, which you can then explain further using pretty much any popular movie or book as an example.  You can combine it with this handout for students to actually note the parts of the example story:

For this particular unit, the students are aiming to write a Quest Story, and a great example of this is Finding Nemo.  It has all the elements of a quest, and a clear narrative structure, so it serves well for establishing the parts of a narrative.  A Quest Story is one of the seven basic plots.  As you discuss narrative structure, you can quickly come up with your own example with the students' help, and then use the narrative structure handout and have students write out the elements of Finding Nemo, or whatever existing you choose, into the table in order for them to demonstrate that they can recognise and organise narrative structure.

The second level of the skeleton is to illustrate the balance of the parts of your story.  One good way to use this resource is to project it onto a whiteboard and colour code the 3 aspects off the explanation:

1. Bones: these are the major events of your story, the essential elements of your narrative, without these you have no story. (no colour coding needed)
2. Muscle: in between bones you have muscle to hold it together and held the skeleton move.  Muscle in the story represents minor events, the things that happen in between to make sense of major events and connect them, avoiding simplistic or jumpy writing. (red words in between the rib bones that say 'minor events')
3. Fat: a healthy body has a little bit of fat, and in your story it's what makes it delicious.  Fat is the detail, the description, the background, the dialogue, the little interesting bits that take it from a basic story to a story worth reading.  Too much fat makes your story unhealthy and might even hinder the enjoyment; if you write 4 pages about your characters dark past for a short, 800 words story, then your story has too much fat. (I usually use purple and make little squiggles around the edges, then scribble lots of purple to show 'too much fat')

This is an activity we do early in the term so that students understand the important of planning, structure and balance before they get too involved in planning or writing their stories.  Students who struggle with writing will understand they need to do more than just list a bunch of 'bones', and students who often go overboard (often these students don't plan their stories) will understand that they need to scale back their extra fun scenes if it's making their story too 'fat'.