Three students all had a similar question, so Mr. It is not as sexy as the pictures that the students were producing, but it was far more significant. My favorite moment was this one with Michael and a handful of students. Look at the detail of the door handle on this house. The rigor that the students imposed upon themselves, again as demanded by their creative idea, was remarkable. Granted, this was a superficial lesson, but to see someone wanting to learn a skill from next year’s course was a treat. Cornelius taught her how to graph sine and cosine waves. In the example below, a student wanted a curly (wavy) tail for her pig. What really impressed me about the lesson was the examples of students who asked to learn something new in order to produce something they chose to create. ![]() During the week-long lab session, I observed one of the days and took a few pictures of some works-in-progress.Īs you can see, the students independently chose to include inequalities in order to produce the shading. He expected only a few takers, but in the end only a few decided to produce the Smiley Face, and this is where the richness of the lesson was truly found. Michael invited students to create their own designs for a higher grade. The strength of this lesson is two-fold: 1) There are a variety of equations involved (circle, ellipse, parabola, absolute value, as well as linear), and 2) repeated restriction of the domain and range. He posed the Smiley Face graph (shown above) as the minimal requirement for passing the assignment. Michael started with a whole-class demonstration of Demos at the end of the period on a Friday. That week produced a multitude of pleasant surprises. Cornelius merged these ideas into a new 5-day lesson in the computer lab. ![]() ![]() I had sent to my Math Department a link to the free online graphing calculator a mutual colleague, Michael White, shared the idea of having students use their knowledge of equations to graph a smiley face. The genesis of the lesson was a combination of an email and a diagram. Cornelius of Great Oak High School, it was a week’s worth of experimenting with new software and pedagogy. For the students, it involved concrete mastery of standards, conceptual understanding of several topics, higher order thinking skills, student autonomy and intellectual need. This lesson on graphing conic sections rocked on multiple levels.
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