One of my favorite things to do at the
beginning of each school year is plan my bulletin boards! I have two in my
classroom. Last year I was a little overzealous and changed them every month or
so.
The first week of school, my students
spent solving brain teasers and logic puzzles. At the end of the week we
compiled a list of problem solving strategies they could use not only for fun
problems, but for math problems too! So, I figured I would incorporate one of
my favorite fall past-times - FOOTBALL! As you know from the last post, I am a
big Peyton Manning fan and hence a big Denver fan. Not pictured is my shrine to
Manning on the left-hand side. I added pics from every game that I got offline
and kept track of the team’s record. The footballs describe the steps on how to
attack a problem and the jerseys are all the problem solving strategies my
students came up with. The play in the middle is something I came up with and
the defensive line in my Calc 1 class helped me fix it - my defense has 12
players! Oops.
So, in a private Catholic high school,
we can celebrate Christmas openly! So, I knew my next bulletin board had to
have a Christmas theme. My Alg 2/Trig students were in the midst of their
quadratics unit and thus, Solving Quadra la la la tics was born. There's
the factor tree, the quadratic formula Rudolf,
and, my favorite, the gingerbread men completing the square of
their gingerbread house. It was a great reference for my students before the
holidays!
My next two boards focused on the
holidays following midterms. First, I made a Valentine's themed board, complete
with how math is love, how to spell LOVE and make a heart on the graphing
calculator, and math pick-up lines that were appropriate for high school
students in a Catholic school...
For St. Patty's Day, I researched
lucky numbers around the world in an attempt to combine math and social
studies.
This. This was my pride and joy last
year. We focused on trig the last part of the year and so I wanted to help my
students out with this reference board. With the unit circle, special right
triangles, trig identities, and degree to radian conversion, I covered the
basic stuff everyone should know about trig. I did a beach theme since it was
such a rough winter - everyone anxiously awaited the warm weather!
To round out the year, I made a board
about test prep for upcoming Regents and finals. At our school, every student
has an iPad, so I incorporated that into my board. Each app is a test prep
strategy!
This year, I had to move to the next
classroom over and share with another math teacher, Mr. Ferguson, who mainly
teaches geometry. I didn't want to over step my boundaries and change bulletin
boards as frequently as I did last year. I was also limited to one of the two
boards. So, I needed something that would be helpful all year. Both my Algebra
2 Common Core and Calculus students need to know their parent functions, so
Function World was born. Featured is the Square Root Express, Parabola Pirate
Ship, Absolute Value Food Court, Natural Log Flume, Exponential Slide, and the
dueling Sine and Cosine coasters. Love it.
As you can see, Mr. Ferguson was so
impressed with my board that he asked me to make one for him. Students in
geometry need to grasp transformations like dilations, rotations, and
reflections, so I came up with Transformation Station as a good pair with
Function World - need to get their somehow! Can you pick out all the
transformations in the picture? ;) So, I am not going all out in the bulletin
board department this year, but I may change Function World into the Trig Top
Circus. We'll see.
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