To Do the Project or Not...

That was the question.

I wavered between the standards needing to be mastered and the time involved with creating a product.

In the end, I decided to move ahead with it.
After all, taking a risk with trying a new lesson idea has always been my mainstay.
I end up learning a great deal in the process,
As well as moving my student's thinking...which is always my top priority!

Projects Engage Students

After introducing the project complete with the rubric,
The students got to work.
And boy did they jump in!
Since this was the first project at the beginning of school
And my knowledge of my students' strengths and weaknesses was still in the baby stages,
I created random groups of 2.
No one complained of their groupings and quickly moved with their engineering partner to start collaborating on their ideas.

Students were allowed to pick their workspace.
Tall tables.
Short tables.
"Comfy" chairs.
Mobile homes...single desks that move as needed around the classroom.
As the project evolved into the construction phase,
It was encouraging to see the students choosing spaces to work that fit these parameters.
The short tables were usually the first to go
With the comfy chairs holding off until the end.

Projects Promote Thinking

After students created their golf hole design and had the math down for two hole-in-one-paths,
I thought, "We could just stop here."
Students were measuring the angles,
They understood the angle of incidence and angle of reflection relationship.
Why go to all the mess to now create a model of their plan?
I'll tell you why I decided to move forward.
Because students need a chance to build,
To get their hands involved in making the math a reality.
The thinking skills,
The engineering strategies,
And the mistakes that all drove the project were worth it!
Students had to think about how to make a 2-D model come to life in 3-D.
Various "engineering" strategies of how to make that happen started to pop up across the room.
As students worked, I bopped from one table to the next,
Listening,
watching,
and asking questions.
I loved seeing the gears in their minds working to make this project work!

Projects Encourage Collaboration

After listening in on several panels of business owners and community members,
I have learned that one of the top skills they are looking for is not intelligence in the content area,
But teamwork and collaboration.
Students were quick to find out if they did not share a common vision for their plan,
The project quickly came to a stand still.
Planning together,
Working together,
And problem solving together became easier when two brains were wrapped around the situation instead of just one.

Projects Incorporate Math Skills

My math focus was to give the students a real life situation to measure angles.
But it was quickly made apparent that other math skills were needed to make their successful.
Measuring and proportional relationships definitely played a part in the end project.

Projects Help Develop a Growth Mindset

For most students, this hands-on creation was viewed as a fun way to do math.
For some though, this project provided frustration and stress.
For some students, stress can be motivating,
But for others, its the catalyst to shut down.
When I first encountered the fixed mindset, I honestly was surprised.
For the most part, the struggles found in the project were met with a positive attitude and perseverance.
But on the last day, with a group where every member had missed one school day due to illness,
The frustration level was high and "give up" factor even higher.
We talked through how these were all normal feelings,
And that recognizing them were essential to moving forward.
But to move forward, a change in mindset had to take place.
As the mindsets started to change, the project started to move forward.
Questions were being asked.
Attempts were starting to happen on paper.
Mistakes were being made,
Which helped with figuring out what to do next.
The project was off the ground!
After working about 7 minutes into their lunch time,
The students had a product to turn in!
As we walked down the hall, we reflected on what had just happened.
How persevering and changing our mindset allowed a good outcome.
Had our mindsets not changed, the outcome would not have been so positive.

Projects Develop Perseverance

Friday morning...last day of the project,
And my room was a buzz with activity by 7:30.
To put this in perspective,
The math room isn't the first place that students flock to.
Ever.
The perseverance and work ethic being demonstrated with this construction project
was building the foundation for future problems down the road.

Projects Develop the Math Practices

Good mathematicians follow the eight math practices.
This project brought five to the forefront.

1. With prior work on angles, students easily made sense of the problem.  It was interesting to see how students entered the building phase, with mistakes guiding the way.  But ultimately it was their perseverance in creating a final product, as they continued to monitor and evaluate their efforts along the way.

2.  Students had to reason through the transition of a 2-D model to it's 3-D counterpart.  Proportional reasoning was brought to light as students realized their model was larger than their blueprint.  How did this affect the angles? The placement of the ball? The placement of the hole?

3. Creating a model of the angles a golf ball travels in this real life situation included several methods.  Students created a diagram to model the angles of incidence and reflection, an actual 3-D model, and then they also represented these supplementary angles in algebraic equations.

4. Choosing appropriate tools is always a decision a mathematician must make.  Tools for this project included protractors, rulers, string, and for some, graph paper.

5. This project was naturally designed for precision with the angle of incidence equalling the angle of reflection.

Projects Release Creativity while Differentiating Difficuties

The creativity behind these projects literally blew me away in some cases! 

(More pictures to follow...)

But to give you a sneak peek we had a farm scene, 

a chicken shaped hole, 

a double-decker two-story hole, 

a candyland hole, 

and one that literally came out of the oven in the form of a cake.

The project offered choice. 

And differentiating it to different abilities was automatically built in.

Students designed the difficulty of their course.

Students could choose to do one-bounce holes-in-one or two-or more bounce holes-in-one.

So looking at it from the flip side today,

Would I do this again?

Was it worth the three days?

Yes.

Especially since it was at the beginning of school.

With all the side road lessons that it offered beyond just the math,

It helped to cement the norms of my classroom.

It gave the students ownership over their learning environment.

But most importantly, it gave me a window into their learning.