Okay.. it's taken me since September but this was the first math class of my Grade 9s where I was convinced that they 'got it'. Not in terms of the math content; these kids are pretty bright. But rather in terms of how one learns math, how they collaborate, share, discuss, conjecture, disagree, check, etc. It was amazing. And, as we were closing down, they made commentary that showed they noticed it too. Finally. I'm recording this so that when it doesn't work, I'll remember. And when a parent complains that I'm not "teaching" because I didn't tell them what to do, I'll have a happy place to go to :)
So using Desmos activities are a great way to encourage exploration and discussion in math class -- if you haven't tried them, I encourage it. They're collected at https://teacher.desmos.com/ But ... Desmos doesn't give you quite enough. It doesn't have a way of capturing the work that the student does within their space, and it doesn't allow for annotation of class contributions as we come together to discuss. Well, not surprisingly, OneNote comes to the rescue. Using the Windows shortcut Windows-Shift-S it is really quick to snag the Desmos screen and pop it into a waiting OneNote page. From there, we can grab our pen and (using wireless projection) talk about what all the different responses mean and where to go from there. (An aside : one of the nice features of Desmos activities are the way you can hit PAUSE and it will pause all the screens of the students working. I always give them a heads up "10 seconds to pause..." and it's refr
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