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Friday, January 20, 2017

Using a Desmos Card Sort in High School Math - Ambiguous Case



We are a 1:1 ipad school and I try to incorporate the iPad into class whenever it works.

I have used Desmos for graphing and to make a Christmas graphing project (see post here: Using Desmos to Graph).

But, I just recently noticed a new feature [new to me at least!] on the teacher side of Desmos.

You can make your own Card Sort!  I am currently teaching the Ambiguous Case in PreCalculus.  Ugh....seriously complicated and sometimes difficult for students to understand.  Plus...I was getting observed during this lesson :)
I first learned about the idea of a desmos card sort from mathcathy (see her post here: Mathy Cathy Blog Post about Card Sorts)

The basic idea is that you give students a set of "cards" (the electronic kind!) and you have the students sort the cards into groups.



Since I am just learning to make card sorts, I kept mine short and to the point.  I put in cute cards that had 0, 1, and 2 graphics on them.  Then I created 6 cards with descriptions of triangles on them.  Students had to decide, based on the given information, if 0, 1, or 2 triangles could be formed.



Students signed in and began to work.  I watched how they were doing on my teacher screen!  Some students were able to be successful fairly quickly, but others had to work at it for awhile.  No problem - I could easily tell when they had it because all of their cards on my screen lit up green.

If I had to do this activity again, I would try to make use of one of the features that mathycathy suggested.  I would project the "anonymous" version of the activity up on the screen so the students could see that other people in the room ARE getting it.

In short, I definitely want to make more card sorts!  My students enjoyed it and so did I :)





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