A full year set of 36 weekly Marbleslide Challenges!

Here is the full set of 36 Marbleslide Challenges I'll be using at my school this year:

Marbleslide Challenge Set

Important tip!

Before doing these challenges with your classes, I'd highly recommend running through at least one of the original Desmos Marbleslides activities with them (Lines, Parabolas, Exponentials, Rationals or Periodics): https://teacher.desmos.com/search?q=marbleslides

Poster templates!(Update) 
Jessica was awesome and made poster templates for each challenge and for the weekly scoreboard. You can make a copy here.

Difficulty

These challenges should work for students of all levels from Algebra 1 onward (and they are even fun and challenging for teachers too!)  Each challenge should be possible to complete using linear equations, but can be solved more elegantly with higher level equations. If students aren't being challenged enough, encourage them to use fewer and more sophisticated equations.  The difficulty increases as the challenges go on, so you might want to leave older challenges open all year and encourage students not to skip too many.

Unlocking Challenges each week
You can use the teacher pacing option on the teacher dashboard to restrict students to the first 3 slides to start, then each week go back into the activity to unlock the next challenge using teacher pacing again.  Not sure how to use teacher pacing? More info here.  You could also just consider giving them the entire challenge set unlocked, and if you do let me know because I'm interested to see how that goes!

Scoring/Prizes
I give these as an optional activity for students to work on if they have some extra time in class or just on their own time.  You might even consider it as a fun optional alternative to certain homework assignments. You could not score them if it's too much work, but they love having their answers highlighted and the competition and you can just score the best few.  At the end of each week I make a quick scoreboard for the top scorers and post it with a screenshot of the some of the more interesting graphs. Here's how I score them:

• 1 point for each star
• 1 extra point if they use only 2 equations
• 2 extra points if they use only 1 equation
• 1-2 points if they have a particularly creative solution. This could be creative mathematically or artistically. 
• 1 point if their solution is very consistent (If you watch a student's solution it might not work perfectly because there is some variation depending on your screen size.  If there's doesn't look like it get all the stars but your dashboard says they did, trust the dashboard)

You might want to consider giving out prizes for students who get all the stars each week.  Some teachers are giving out Desmos stickers this year, and I was giving out treats last year while school policy allowed for it.

You can hide students using the gear button in the teacher dashboard if you want to highlight or screenshot awesome answers, but make sure to not forget about those hidden students in following weeks!  If you have large classes, you might want to split them into different class codes to make things more manageable.

The Learning
What I loved about doing Marbleslides Challenges last year was that it gave some of my students the need and motivation to learn and explore all sorts of graphs and equations outside the regular scope of class. Last year I had students figuring out how to use and transform equations that they wouldn't learn about for years in regular school curriculum.  Every once in awhile I'd give them a tiny little piece of info to move them forward "Oh here's an equation that looks cool" or "Hey, it's a little easier to work with that function if it's in this form" and then let them figure out the rest.



If you have need help getting started or have any questions leave a comment here or tweet at me @SweenWSweens . Feel free to tweak things however you think will work best for you, and let me know what works and doesn't in the comments!

Special thanks to Julie who had the awesome idea of putting Marbleslide Challenges together in one activity and then managing the year with Desmos Activity Builder's teacher pacing option.  I loved the idea, and got these challenges together quickly for the start of the school year as a result!

Yearbook Signatures

Posts have been lacking in the last 2 weeks because I've started developing a math note/workbook program for students to more easily take notes or do work on problems, which has been taking up all of my free time.

Pretty much every time I try to write words in a yearbook for a student it comes out completely and utterly cliche. (You're a great student! Have a good summer!  Good luck!)  So, I've decided to stop writing words altogether and usually draw a picture or do some sort of relevant-to-them thing.  Here's a solid work of genius I came up with today:

The answer is pretty worth it, IMHO, so give it a try if you've got some free time!  You can do the harder parts with wolframalpha if you want to cheat. (The integral from ___ of ___, the derivative of ___ at ___, the lim as x approaches ___ of ___)  Sam and Dave, this is a no calculator question for you!

PS- I triple checked the answer would come out right, but I still have a sinking feeling I messed something up.

Slope, slope, slope, slope, slope, slope, slope, slope

First, I have to say I can't take credit for this myself.  The mysterious "Andrew" left a comment on this post

and it was too awesome to ignore.  It didn't seem like he had a blog, so I figured I'd post this because it worked really well.

Second, I swear that my classes aren't all songs and dances.  I just wanted to post this now because I know teachers will have just done slope or are starting it soon, and it went really well.

Andrew's suggestion was to use the tune to Flo Rida's "Low" but with the following words:

The difference of the y and the difference of the x

Also known as rise over run

Divide the two

And then reduce

Then you got slope, slope, slope, slope

I added the following verse in between chorus' to add a little excitement:

"When I'm sittin' in math and I'm tryin' to find

How to get the the slope, the slope of a line

I think about the rise, and the run all the time

Then I think of this song, and I'm gonna be fine

1/2 slope come on

1 slope come on

2 slope come on

now that's three slopes

You think I'm a dope?

I'd gotta say nope

I am gonna find that slope!"

So, I easily found an instrumental version of the song by searching google and played it in the background.  I had a student from another class help out the first time to introduce it.  This is how it went(the 3rd time through):

Pick up - Algebra Game

The first couple lessons I shared were from my Algebra 2 class, so I figured it was time to share something from Algebra 1.  This lesson revolves around a game that I think a student taught me years ago, but was similar to a game that we played in my college game theory class.  The kids have a lot of fun, because they get to compete and figure out strategy.  I call the game Pick up.

 I split students up into groups of twos, and give each group a few pieces of scrap paper.  I tell each group to rip up the paper to get 21 scraps of similar size.  On one of those scraps they write the words "Math Fun." Then I give them directions for the game, which goes like this:

• The 21 pieces are placed down on a desk or the floor with the "Math Fun" piece showing and visible the whole game, like above.
• Players take turns picking up at least 1, and up to 3 pieces at a time.
• Whoever must pick up the Math Fun piece loses.

Then I let the students play.  They get to practice for awhile to get a feel for some basic strategy, but soon we start a tournament. Students that don't win the first round play off for a wildcard spot or two later in the bracket.  Excitement builds, someone wins candy and then we begin discussion.

I prompt them with questions like "Well, what worked?"  The winner will definitely have figured out what to do at the end, but they won't need to step it all the way back to the start to win games, so they don't.  Then we start discussion around the question "Well, in what situation are you sure to win?"  We decide to not count the Math Fun piece because it's pretty much irrelevant and we go through each situation that occurs at the end of a player's turn assuming their opponent is playing perfectly.  It's fun for them think their way through it, and my students have been able to figure out the situations below with minimal prompting.

1- You lose, opponent takes 1.
2- You lose, opponent takes 2.
3- You lose, opponent takes 3
4- You WIN, opponent has to leave you with 1, 2 or 3.
5- You lose, opponent takes 1, leaving you with 4.
6- lose
7- lose
8- win
9- lose
10- lose
11- lose
12- win

At #8, they might see the pattern, at 12 they are sure of it.
"So, could we.... write a linear equation that would tell us the winning numbers?"
"If we counted the Math Fun piece, how would our winning situations change?  How would the equation change?"
blahblahblah Slope, blahblahblah y-intercept.  Hooray for math!

Extensions:
     Which player has the advantage if both play perfectly?
     What if you could take up to 4 pieces?  Only 2? 10?

Super Extension:
     What if you split it into 2 piles, with two special pieces, and could only take from one at a time?