Comics in Math & CS Education

Teaching computer science and continually developing as a tech-centered educator, I am always looking for ways to teach students while incorporating my passions. I have been able to connect with students on gaming, and one other connection that is always on my radar is my passion for comic books. I have been an avid comic and pop culture enthusiast for much of my life. It started when I was 6 years old, with Saturday morning cartoons, watching X-Men: The Animated Series. After that, I became a devoted comic book collector and found enjoyment in reading different titles. In my personal collection, I have over 5,000 comics and graphic novels. Students can throw me off topic anytime they want because of my enthusiasm for superheroes and understanding of the comic book world. I’d say X-Men by Marvel Comics is my mainstay and favorite group of outcast superheroes. 

Using comics in education is nothing new, but it does still have a distinct flair. Comics have been created for everything from history and English, to financial Literacy and science.  I’ve been following and have been friends with Tim Smyth for several years now. His posts on Twitter (I’ll never call it X) inspired me to dive into more comics in my classroom as well. Tim is a middle school social studies teacher, a few hours away from me in Pennsylvania. He has a host of resources on his website, Teaching with Comics, that anyone would find valuable. In addition, he hosts a Facebook Group for like-minded educators and has written a book with lesson plans and how-to tutorials for making successful connections between learning and comic books. Mathematics is not an easy topic to find comic book references in, so after several years of comic book enthusiasm, I have only ever seen a handful of math-related comic titles. One comes from Practical Money Skills. They partnered with Marvel Comics to release 3 one-shot comics on personal finance, found here: Practical Money Skills Educational Comics.

Textbook by Tim Smyth, "Teaching with Comics and Graphic Novels"

With computer science at the forefront of everyone’s career skillset, educators are on the lookout for ways to connect their students to engage with the content. Power On! by Jean J. Ryoo and Jane Margolis is written by computer science faculty at UCLA, and champions the ideas of inclusive, equitable learning of computer science. The story follows four teens in California, engaged in learning computer science and finding their way in the world. It is a very relatable and diverse story that helps all students find themselves as computer scientists. Read my Goodreads Review Here: Power On! Review

Comic by Jean J. Ryoo and Jane Margolis, "Power On!"

Another great set of books I found while at a local Comic-Con, written by JP. Jackson. In Growin’ in the Garden, JP shares a story about a set of twins in a futuristic society that explores the biomes and world around them. In the second comic, they are set to explore viruses, and can be purchased by the end of this year.

Comic by JP Jackson, "Growin' in the Garden"

Math and science are not exclusive to reading and writing, so finding engaging comics and opportunities to help students read is a cross-curricular approach to STEM learning. These examples are just a few of the ways I have incorporated comics into my math, and some could with their own science courses. I hope to build a library for students to engage in meaningful literature. My next goal is to create some lesson plans incorporating the characters of some of my favorite books. One such lesson in development is about how fast Quicksilver runs to save all the X-Men from an explosion in the last X-Men: Apocalypse film.

How Family Saved My Career

I am far from a perfect human being and far from a perfect teacher.

I never wanted to go above and beyond what I considered my job until I met my wife.

The year, 2011 was the start of something special, my wife went on a first date with me, and that was the start of our amazing little family.

Three houses, three energetic dogs and two remarkable daughters later I have found myself wanting to make sure I am pushing myself to be the teacher that my daughters deserve in my own classroom.  It is funny how having your own children can change your perspective on teaching.  My family gave me the confidence to step-up to more leadership roles, go for the master's degree I wanted and become an educator that my students deserve.

My Girls 

After starting courses on Technology in Education, I brought up my Twitter account and started following more educators, growing an awesome #PLN (Professional Learning Network).  I found the Math-Twitter Blog-o-Sphere (#MTBoS) and followed more like-minded math teachers which in turn helped me find fun, engaging activities for my students. While researching and finding more information during my second master's, I dove headfirst into video games in the classroom and exploring the ever-growing eSports in education movement. I also found the #eSportsEDU and #games4ed hashtag followings on Twitter.  Growing my #PLN to include more technology education and game-based learning in the classroom.

Search Twitter for #MTBoS

Finding support in my family, both in my home, in my Bearcat Family and also with my Twitter Family, has given me more confidence in my teaching, pushed me to find meaning and challenges in education, and ultimately saved my career.

Search Twitter for #esportsEDU

Curve Sketching with the 1st and 2nd Derivative

I am a teacher by day, and an adjunct by night.  One evening, while looking out into the sea of college freshmen, during one of my "lectures" I noticed that their faces all had that glazed over look, they were not as engaged and all around looking miserable.  The college students humor me by laughing at my horrible jokes, and will even ask questions when they need, but I did not feel the room at all that night.  Later that week I was on Twitter scrolling through, and found an interesting Tweet by Robert Kaplinsky, "Who ever felt that lecture was the pinnacle of education?! If anything, we should be giving them our best instruction to prepare them."  Although lecturing is sometimes necessary to convey content, it should not be the sole way students of any age are taught.

Who ever felt that lecture was the pinnacle of education?! If anything, we should be giving them our best instruction to prepare them.

— Robert Kaplinsky (@robertkaplinsky) October 31, 2017

Rubric: Curve Sketching Rubric
Project Example: First & Second Derivative Test Project

With that in mind, I also remembered that last year while teaching the same topic on curve sketching.  I was so excited by my examples and how to do the problems, that after I was done with the class I quickly assigned the odd problems from the text book.  Not thinking that each problem took about 15 minutes to complete, and giving 15 problems at 15 minutes a piece meant almost 4 hours worth of homework.  I did a complete disservice to those students with the assignment, and quickly had to apologize.  After reflecting on the previous year, and thinking about how I wanted this current semester to go, I figured out a new way of teaching the problem set and I feel I came up with a more interesting and collaborative way to practice the skill of curve sketching using derivatives.

Group 4's Project and Discussion were both great! 
Read below for more on the interactions of the group and the language used. 

Students were randomly assigned into 6 groups of 4.  I created a Google Drive Folder for each group and then made some adjustments to the problems from the text and my unit review.  Each group was assigned two functions to use the first and second derivative test, creating the curve sketching information that they needed.  Groups were to find the relative maxima, relative minima, any inflection points, where there was concavity up or down, and where the function was decreasing and increasing.   The groups added comments and edits, gave each other feedback and created a great collaborative final answer for their functions.  They also were to sketch the curve with Desmos, and find all of the points that they solved for mathematically on the picture instead of all by hand.  I had each group member turn in their perspective rough draft to have students show more than just participation in the online document, but the collaboration piece was key.  A lot of the discussions were really powerful with well thought out questions, leading to deeper understanding of the tables and sign charts groups created.    They learned from each other how to successfully apply the derivative tests to the function and what pieces would ultimately help them sketch the graph.  the groups also made their sign charts each in different modes through technology or taking a picture of their hand drawn chart.

Student Sign Charts were interesting and creatively made. 

Another Group's Sign Chart

After everyone had turned in their Google Doc, I also wanted to get a feel for the students' outlook from completing their group project. I created a Google Form and asked several questions about how they felt the project went. A majority of the feedback that came back said the group project was enjoyable, and it helped that students with understanding the process. I also saw a lot of good computational thinking in the form of their summative assessment following our fourth unit, and I think that I will use this project in years to come. My new goal is to create one collaborative or group project for each unit of my course to engage my college learners in a more enriching fashion. Next year I plan to facilitate another learning experience that will enhance my college course, and make the course even more engaging.

YCCOSP 2017 Summer Reflection

The YCCOSP Program

For the past three years I have worked for York College of Pennsylvania as an adjunct professor and as a summer mathematics instructor for the York College Community Opportunity Scholarship Program.  The summer program is designed to help our students succeed in an accelerated curriculum and prepare them to enter college.  The program offers enrichment to students who apply to the program from William Penn Senior High School. The groups that are in the program are either entering their sophomore, junior or senior year of high school.  I work directly every morning and afternoon with the Rising Sophomores and Juniors teaching them more mathematics problem solving and critical thinking skills.  They also take a course on reading and writing to help develop those skills.  The Rising Seniors take an entry level writing college course and can earn course credit with successful completion of the class.

The program is designed to enrich and has no set curriculum so I have the freedom to design whatever I want for the students to create and learn.  Working at William Penn and knowing the curriculum we offer helps me in structuring the summer class for the students' success for the upcoming school year.  The program helps emphasize critical thinking skills and advancing SAT preparatory skills.  Students in the program are either going into Pre-Calculus their junior year or doubling up their sophomore year with Geometry and Algebra 2.  We worked this past summer on skills involving critical thinking, problem solving, polynomials, geometry basics, trigonometry and even some statistics.  The ten students were also broken into three teams that were tasked with a culminating project called "Design a Winner."

2017 Project: Designing a Winner

Each year the students showcase what they have learned and/or worked on, so this year I found a project online through Curriki using geometric skills to, "Design a Winner."  Students were tasked with building a multi-sports complex with set criteria.  The question  was designed as open ended and each team created a company name, then they had to start preliminary designs, proposals, 3-D models of the final design and showcase mathematical computations they used to help in their designs.  The beauty of the project was that it tied into what is going on in the community already. We begun by reading the YDR article "Rutter's cornfield could become sports complex."


Students also got a special treat because there is one of the largest sports complexes in the nation right down the road from York in Lancaster.  We bused the group down Route 30 to the Spooky Nook Sports Complex, where two experts lead us on a tour of the facility and gave us facts and figures to start the teams on their brainstorming creativity.  Students took to Instagram for a scavenger hunt on the tour and documented the trip with facts and pictures of the facility to use in their projects.  Students then took to using Sketchup to complete 3-D models of their projects.  (Educators can get the $600 program for free with proof of employment by a school district!)

Reflection

With the program running for 5 weeks and only Monday-Thursday time was limited on the project.  What made things run more smoothly was dividing up the aspects of the project between the student writing class time and mathematics class time.  Students wrote proposals, created Powerpoints and designed pamphlets for advertising in the writing class. They then created their model, used mathematical ratios and proportions to scale their models and created a poster to show off their designs and calculations in math class.  All components were then put on display during the showcase finale.  Students were also tasked with writing and orally practicing their proposal so they could discuss and answer questions about their project with the staff and parents who came to view their work.  

Students working on their project.

The last week I was really worried about how the project would turn out because I felt like we had rushed everything to be done on time.  We did not get to use trigonometry to talk about angles in the complexes the students were creating nor did we complete more calculations that would have intensified the math, but the students were excited to use the Sketchup program and learn about new designing software.  The thing that also did not help was that I did not have time to approach and have the campuses IT download or purchase a subscription to Sketchup for the students, I took my own personal laptops, I had 2, for the students to use and one student brought his own and downloaded the free version of Sketchup Maker.  The designs that came from the students were pretty amazing, although the time did not permit tons of detail they did come up with some interesting beginnings of designs.  

Athletic Era and their Project Design

The students were innovative and worked diligently in and out of the classroom, some utilized the Google Document Apps features to collaborate on one pamphlet or slide show at all times, which I did not even have to suggest.  By the end of the program my fears of the students being unprepared quickly subsided by looking at the posters and listening to the students discuss their designs to various YCP faculty members and their parents.  The students had a great sense of what the project was all about, they had stunning posters, great rate changes and an even better understanding behind design.  One group thought so much about the culture of York that they wanted to create a complex in the formation of a rose, since we are the White Rose City.  

AGibso and their Project Design

Although I did not feel like we got through everything that could have been done with the project, the time that I had with my students was invaluable in re-fueling the fire that makes me want to teach.  The inquisitive creative teams that I worked with were fun and impressed me with the work they completed.  The students did such a great job this summer that I feel a sense of pride in their accomplishments, plus I feel rejuvenated and ready to take on my regular geometry classes again! 

Clock Work and their Project Design

#ObserveMe

While working on my graduate courses and finding new professional development pieces for my coursework I stumbled upon this new movement, #ObserveMe.  I decided to go all out for the last few weeks of school and try out the new tool.  I found a generic observation form for mathematics, and then created a Google Form that was linked to a QR code outside of my room.  The Google Form contained a few questions a colleague could give me feedback on.

The objectives I wanted feedback on were:

1. Improving questioning skills to further student problem solving skills.
2. Have students persevere in making sense of problem solving.
3. Create meaningful activities for critical thinking and problem based learning.

With our district being inner city urban youth, we are constantly under scrutiny from all sides and from that we were tasked with creating a teacher to teacher observation tool within each building.  Through all of the meetings about what it would look like, and Distributed Leadership meetings that we were going this route, but we never got into the full use of the teacher observation and collaboration tool.  Since I found the tool I figured why not give it a try and open up my classroom to others.

Digital Media in Education

Throughout my career I have found different activities helpful for teaching my classes.  Students in my Geometry class have skeletal notes that they take in notebooks, they get practice in various forms, and sometimes I like to add extra information in the form of YouTube videos.  I have curated some interesting Geometry videos and rap songs written about geometry topics to help my students remember and understand the concepts that they are learning.   Some of the YouTube channels I have put together are below:

Triangles in Geometry - Involves triangle classification, Pythagorean theorem, Trigonometric Functions Songs 

Logic in Geometry - Helpful videos to introduce or enhance the understanding of Logic

Fractals in Geometry - Fractals in African Culture and a fun Doodle about Fractals 

Data Wall

Since I joined the Distributed Leadership team at William Penn Senior High School I have been pushing myself as an educator to do more for the school, and I have seen progress be made.  Simple things have helped change the culture in the building and letting students know where they are academically has been one of them.  The art teacher in my building came up with her simple data wall that the district had asked us to put up.  She had the template and I just copied and used it.  (Her class art can be shown here! The Muddy Bearcat )  My data wall is simple and lets students know how each class's grades are doing compared to one another.  I color coded the dots on each sheet to match up with those that are being used in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to show Blue for A's (Advanced), Green for B's (Proficient), Yellow for C's (Basic), Orange for D's (Below Basic) and Red for F's (Little to No Work).

Journaling in Geometry

While sitting through a Professional Development two years ago, I found myself excited to learn and ready to get back into the classroom.  Our presenter was enthusiastic, knowledgeable and fun and I really started to get into the ideology of writing in a mathematics classroom and how I wanted to implement that as a new procedure in my classroom.  I had always had students do a Problem of the Day that they recorded the problem and solved it on a sheet that would be turned in at the end of the week as part of a small formative grade, but after listening to our speaker I decided I would try journaling instead.  Since I have taught in an urban setting for all of my career my colleagues and I asked how to get students to build their writing skills.  Following the different ideologies from Collin's Writing and how to Build Stamina for Writing we discussed the three following types of writing that are useful in developing understanding and writing in a mathematics classroom:

1.  Descriptive Writing: the first step is to just get students to write their thoughts on paper; ask for a specific idea or concept that students should already know.  A way to differentiate would be to give a list of 5 specific questions or topics and have students pick at least 3 to write about, and students who can or need to be pushed can write about all 5.

Ex. Describe the classifications of triangles.
a. Give a description of each classification of triangles by their side lengths.
b. Give a description of each classification of triangles by their angle measures.

2.  Procedural Writing: The second type is to expand and have students write about procedures, such as How to make a PB & J?  Students should summarize a process, explain how to do correctly solve a problem.  It is a good way to start having students process steps in mathematics and give more information.

Ex. Explain the process in drawing a right scalene triangle.

3. Conceptual Writing: The third is then to convey understanding  check for clarity, correct vocabulary usage, correct mathematical concept usage.

Ex. a. What are the differences  between the given triangles?  Explain how you found those differences.

b. Can a scalene triangle also be a right triangle?



Using these three types of writing in a sequential order, students become more comfortable after doing multiple descriptive writing responses, and you can expand on their writing by making more procedural writing prompts, or conceptual writing prompts later in the school year.  Finding prompts (Journal Prompt Search) is always easy as well, Googling Math Writing Prompts yields many results with various forms and formats.

While using this process I have found a systematic way to have students complete the journal each day before class.  Every Monday Wednesday and Friday students write on their Geometry Journal Page.  I also found these Stamina Building Phrases to be useful.  Since we write on certain days of the week, the other two days in order to help with understanding and fluency in mathematics I have also implemented Number Talks, which helps me build not only students writing but also their oral fluency in mathematics.   Students in my classroom are writing and discussing to build on their understanding, they are writing to learn mathematics, not learning to write.  With these formative tools I feel I have improved my classroom understanding.

Reading and grading all of these journals seems like a tedious, time consuming event, but if done right no teacher has to read all of the journal responses.  The instructor during our professional development explained that in order to validate writing, students need to have their writing read, so to make sure everyone has their responses and opinions read, students in my classroom trade journals with a partner and then do a partner response.  Usually the response is for students to read their partner's writing and give one piece of advice or to state whether or not they agree with their partners writing.  Having the partner response and original response be a combined grade on the page holds everyone accountable.  I usually assign 2 points for each individual response and then 1 point for each partner response on the page.  Then I only have to glance at each section on the page to grade the journal page, making grading easy.