As a math teacher, classroom projects make me queasy. I have a lot of standards to teach and not enough time to teach them, so taking time away from direct instruction seems risky. What if my principal comes in and it just looks like everyone is “coloring.” I teach high school math. That would be bad. Math classes are supposed to be orderly and serious--right?
Still, after a lot of feedback from my Algebra I students that they were “tired of the same old thing,” I decided to go for it.
I named the project “Writing your future equation.” The premise was that kids would pick their ideal future profession and write two of the letters in that word in a coordinate plane. Then each student was responsible for writing the linear equations of the lines and line segments that form the letter. The kids collaged the coordinate plane letters with normal letters and decorated the word. Then they wrote short essays about why they wanted to become this kind of professional and how math would help them achieve this goal.
While the decorating and collaging was a little hectic--my students had a far more meaningful learning experience than they would have had I just written “SWBAT: Write linear equations from a graph.” They were excited, and loved having the chance to talk about their individual dreams and aspirations while working on a math concept. Every kid had a chance to be successful as the project scaffolded its self. Some students chose easier letters with lots of horizontal or vertical lines like “E” and some students went for more challenging letters like “K,” “A,” or “Y.”
Lessons learned: If you’ve got a larger class size BEWARE OF GLITTER GLUE. Don’t let it lure you in with its glittery goodness. It takes a long time to dry, and even high schoolers--with their allegedly developed motor skills--had a hard time not squeezing the bottles too hard. Long story short, we had a lot of globby looking lettering and a hard time finding adequate drying space. Too many kids ended up smearing their projects (or worse, their peer’s projects).
Other Tips: Create a complete project yourself to show the kids. I made one for the profession “teacher” and hung it up in the room for the kids to look at. Next time I do this project, I’ll also have them grade my project using my the rubric I use to grade theirs.
