Hey {{custom.firstName}},
One way we’ll support your growth this year is through periodic lesson preview emails, each of which will highlight something interesting, delightful, or new about a lesson you’re about to teach.
For these first five lesson preview emails, I’ll share five of the top tips Desmos teachers have found essential for their work in past years. (If you’d rather not receive them, no problem, just turn them off in “Manage Preferences” below.)
Top Tip No. 1: Nobody needs to finish everything.
If you find yourself running short on time, if you find some students ready to move on and others needing more time, please tell yourself that your students will still learn even if they don’t finish every screen correctly, even if they don’t finish every screen at all.
This is a wonderful realization: learning doesn’t just live in the checkmark on a successfully completed screen.
Learning is everywhere and it’s happening all the time. Students learn when they finish screens correctly, but also when they see other student responses on their screen; when they compare their ideas with a neighbor’s; when they take a shower the next day and a thought pops into their head about scale factors. You know this is true for yourself in your own learning!
Learning especially happens when you post-teach, drawing from whatever ideas students have offered you—right or wrong. So don’t wait to move on until every student has finished every screen correctly. Move on when enough students have had enough experience in the lesson to benefit from a post-teaching conversation.
What does it look like in the next lesson?
In Spinning, Flipping, Sliding, we ask students to describe transformations using formal mathematical language. If you wait until every student finishes every screen correctly before synthesizing their work, you risk running out of time and boring students who are ready to move on. Instead, start your post-teaching when most students have seen every screen. Every student will benefit from that post-teaching and you’ll successfully complete the lesson.
Dan & the Desmos Classroom Team
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Great advice from other teachers.
A teacher in Toronto, Ontario.
Create a poster that you can show midway through the Polygraph with key vocabulary. Showcase the poster during the "pause" before students work in their second (formal) phase of Polygraph. This explicit teaching is recommended in the notes. Perhaps add the words Image and Original to the language.
A teacher in Springfield, MO.
After the lesson go back to the game and play it again. This time try to use the "new" vocabulary as you try to find the shape.
