The End of the Year

It's been over a month since I've posted. I spent a lot of time finishing up my thesis and I'm proud to say that within the time between this post and my last one, I've obtained my master's degree in Education (MS.Ed). I will also teach summer school and continue to teach 6th graders in the next school year! This year has taught me so much that I'll outline in another post later.

My students have grown and learned so much this year and have even surpassed my ability in many of the thinking and strategic games we play (i.e. Lightbot). More students have also fully completed Dragonbox 2. if I make a mistake while going over a problem (purposely or not), they will sometimes correct me.

Lastly, some students have taken the initative and asked me to teach them specific things in math. My highlight of the day "Mr. E, can you teach me geometry?" Not my favorite sub-topic in math but I am happy that there is a desire to learn and grow! We have been playing educational and/or practice games. Here are some of the more recent videos below:

P.S. - Is the power of multiplayer/network games in mathematics not apparent from the video below? Technology is such a strong tool in education and the level of engagement is unmatched. Ultimately, I want to take the time and use the experience I have with video games to create my own engaging game(s) for math. Coding comes first.

Getting our Own Data

The point of this lesson was for us to generate our own data and later create histograms, dot plots, and box plots using the data. Students played Mario Kart 8 and took the average number of points for each group of 4 players at the end of a race. They had to answer the following questions:

Considering variables are plentiful in Mario Kart 8, I thought that it'd be a good idea to mention how these things can cause us to make skewed conclusions considering so many factors could have affected the outcome (items and course obstacles are good example for Mario Kart). They struggled with conceptual questions that required them to compare the group average to each individual player's number of points.

The activity was fun, but I don't think the students got what I wanted them to get out of it. I really wanted them to understand that all of these different variables in the game can affect what place you come in, which in turn affects the number of points you will  get. Given this, it's hard to make a conclusion like "Mr. E is a better player than Mr. Campbell" because so many variables could affect the outcome. Only tiny portion of them were able to grasp that.

I am happy that I gave something new/different a shot! At the very least the kids had fun!

Too Cool

On any given day, there are at least 10-15 students that desire to come to my room to hangout, and will wait by my door to do so. This does not include the extra 10 that make walk-in demands. I do not tell these students to come upstairs. They wait by my door on their own. At least unlike last year, I can actually manage so many students now, however, I no longer have a lunch period! I try to create a list for all of the students that would like to go downstairs and get lunch, but there are just too many. Although it's not my fault, my apologies to any of my co-workers that this is causing trouble for! On the days in which I have the video games, there are even more students. Last Friday all 25+ seats were full! I am extremely exhausted, not only with school and my thesis, but the end of the year quality review, my bulletin, as well as the end of the school year.

On the bright side, I have undoubtedly been successful with getting students to play "games" (and I put this in quotation because they are no longer games in the sense where the only thing gained from playing is solely entertainment) that require them to critically think. First with square dice, and now Dragonbox. Students are extremely anxious to come upstairs for lunch and continue their accounts in Dragonbox. This is awesome. If they continue to play these types of games that I have played when I was their age, their critical thinking skills will be superb by the middle of next year. I am already confident that many of them have done a great job with the exam and will be prepared for the net school year.

Mario Kart 8 and Statistics Part II

Lesson #53 - Statistical Questions With Mario by MR.E

Mario Kart 8 & Statistics

It's been tough to update as I have been trying my best to juggle chapter 6 of my thesis as well as prepare students for the state exam. I have absolutely no time as of late. We will be working on a unit focusing on probability and statistics after the test. I want the students to be able to answer statistical questions surrounding Mario Kart 8, and use the data gathered from their races to learn statistical concepts.

Mean, median, mode, range, box plots of their data, etc. Perhaps we can answer a question like "are the girls or boys more likely to score higher in a race of Mario Kart 8?" or "what is the average time it takes (insert class here) to complete a race in Mario Kart 8?" There are so many things that can affect the data (items, computers or no computers, stage difficulty), and this serves as a good discussion to have with the kids. What's best is that ALL students can access this because all that's required is for you to play! I have a bit more planning to do to figure out how things will run, but I'm excited and I'm sure they'll be excited too.

From Dragonbox to Equations

Dragonbox Takes off

Originally intended to be just a project, Dragonbox has certainly taken off with 603. From 6 iPads to all of the laptops in the cart! What I love about the game is it really is as though you're being ranked. The further you get in the game (without help), the stronger you are. For the students that have completed the first Dragonbox, I have purchased the 2nd one (age 12+) for the computers in the cart.

It will be interesting to see how this transfers onto 7th grade. The next few posts will be a quick (or not so quick) peek into how the game can help with algebra.

Back from Tokyo

I have been away from the blog for a while! Not only have I been trying my best to prepare the students for the Common Core State math exam next week, I took a trip to Japan during Spring break. I am STILL jetlagged and have gotten no more than 4 hours of sleep the past few nights.

In addition to the Spring Break homework packet, I am giving another packet this weekend that will cover adding decimals, quadrants, inequalities, unit rates and absolute value.

Our next unit is statistics and I want to use Mario Kart 8 to be our source for gaining data. Perhaps we can work towards finding out the fastest players or the fastest class, and use data from the game (the time it takes students to complete a race) to learn stat topics such as mean, median, mode, box plots, stem/leaf, etc.

Spring Break and Math

As spring break starts next Friday, I am planning to give the students a very long homework packet that they can begin on Tuesday. It's fairly questionable as to why the upcoming state exams (April 23rd) are taking place so soon after spring break (in the case of ELA, almost immediately). The kids are still in vacation mode and take some time to adjust. Nevertheless, I want to make sure that the students are prepared. There are very few teaching days in April.

Topics will include everything that we've learned from the beginning of the school year as well as plenty of word problems. I will be in Tokyo for the entire duration of the break, so I'm hoping that the kids will spend plenty of time studying and trying their best practicing. We have started to review already beginning with percents.

Video Games in Mathematics VII

Unexpectedly, I am able to login to my iTunes account and purchase the game on the Macs in the cart. Therefore, we now have a new addition to our crew!

They've tested the game, like it, and are enthusiastic about continuing their progress on Monday.

Here are some other videos from Day 3: