Ever read the story, "If You Give a Mouse A Cookie" by Laura Numeroff? I had not until I married an elementary school teacher, and read the book she had in her classroom. Several years ago after reading the book I had an idea that was going to allow me to use the story for my students as well. What could a Geometry Teacher do with a children's book you may ask? Well it's simple, the entire book is written as conditional statements, if p then q. In my second unit in the school year, Reasoning and Proofs, we delve into the mechanics of writing
conditional statements, their converses, inverses, even contrapositives, and using the symbols to write these statements. The statements are used throughout my course to write and prove postulates, properties, theorems and corollaries. Students immerse themselves in the logic of the statements and decide whether or not there is a truth value to a given statement.
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| 6th Period Starting the Project |
When I originally designed my project I had students write their own book and draw illustrations in it. But now as I am becoming more tech savvy and more digitally in-tuned with my students needs. I figured why not adapt the use of computers to make a PowerPoint of the book? The end goal is to make Google Slides the tool we use. But until students can log-in to a true Google Account and collaborate with students on the use of Google Apps, I am stuck with what little true collaboration my students and I have now. Students are going to have to write their own
Conditional Statement Story Project, much like "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." The requirements are that the story has 10 conditional statements, 4 original statements, 2 converses, 2 inverses and 2 contrapositives that flow together much like the story I read to them Tuesday. Students will then work in pairs to write their story and illustrate it with pictures from the web. I have a Google Slide set up to show them the proper uses of a Google Image Search to utilize photos for their presentation that have permission to reuse and distribute the image. I added this component of Digital Citizenship to promote the Creative Commons that many other students already know about.
Since students could not access Google Slides from the network computers we were utilizing, I then had to change gears in my planning and have all students create their stories using Microsoft PowerPoint. They then uploaded their typed rough draft and final PowerPoint presentation to my Dropbox account. My Wiki page linked
here allowed them access to the links I provided for my Dropbox, where I could then add the presentations to my Google Drive and convert them to Google Slides to easily share online. One key characteristic of being an educator is that I am very flexible and while I would like to continue my journey in learning and utilizing Google Apps, I know that there are tools out there already that help me with technically updating my craft.
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| 7th Period Starting the Project |
Wednesday I was observed by my administrator while students were working on this project and so I am using this post as my reflection piece. (
Lesson Plan Here) Some thoughts I had while thinking back on my activity are; I would like to change my requirements for the rough draft for next year by making students label their statements, and also have them put the labels in the notes section of their PowerPoint or Google Slide. Although most students completed a nice cover page some needed to be asked to do so, so next year I am going to add a cover page section into the rubric. I feel students worked really hard on their stories, had good questions about the project, and I chose some of the best ones to share below.
Please read and enjoy the great things these students accomplished while writing, creating and learning online.
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