This is the final week of the MTBoS blogging initiative!

This week I have been teaching geometric transformations.  Every day has had the same start. I had students check their homework by going on Haiku the moment they walk in. Students can check their work at their own pace and have the answers directly on their screen.

When they are finished checking their homework, my students then enter our class code in on PeardDeck . PearDeck creates interactive lectures. I embedded a Desmos Activity into the first part of my lesson for every transformation. As soon as my students log into PearDeck they are taken directly to this activity and are able to start at their own pace.

Today, students were learning dilations. They started working on the Desmos Activity I created that explored dilations using tables. Most of my students finished in about 2o/25 minutes. When they finished, I changed the slide to discuss as a class what they found out about dilations.

Next, students were able to practice dilations on PearDeck together. I gave my students a shapes and the dilation and they drew the dilation on their slide (I let them draw pictures if they finish early). I was then able to overlay all of the drawings to see if any of the students were off, and I could show individual students work as well.

When I PearDeck I usually bring in my Ipad so I can control the presentation from anywhere around the room. I could also see every students’ work on my iPad while they were working. This allowed me to see and fix student mistakes instantly.

We practiced 4 dilations together, then they were taken to another Desmos Activity. This activity is a polygraph game that I created for students to practice describing all of the transformations they learned so far (reflections, translations, dilations). Students played this game for about 10-15 minutes at the end of class. Students LOVE polygraph. I literally had to kick students out of my class because they didn’t want to leave.

Some student comments I heard today were….

“Class is over already? I don’t want to go to my next class!”

“I love this! Can we do this more often?”

“This is so much fun”

I love polygraph because students were talking mathematically, getting excited about math, and I could see all of the questions they were asking eachother. Although I don’t always play polygraph in class, my typical class consist of a PearDeck presentation and depending the lesson, a Desmos Activity. 

Feel free to checkout my past Peardeck presentations and Desmos Activities and reach out if you have any questions.