Post-it Mario and Pikachu

There are many delicious ways to cook with chicken, right?

I've alluded to this perspective of mine a few times, and wrote about some of it more explicitly in this last post.

Believing in that every teacher brings (and should bring) their own touch and their own personality to any raw idea, is why I love open-ended "idea sites" like 101qs or visual patterns or wodb...etc.  But in any case, that's another topic to be revisited another time.

(edit: since this draft, there's another post that touches on a similar discussion except with a more positive tone from @mathymeg07)

You may or may not have seen this post from @MrOrr_geek, which was inspired by @mr_stadel's cabinet problem, and supported by @nathankraft1's Van Gogh art.

Those are all great posts if you haven't seen them yet.

The following is my description of what I did.

I had it tentatively planned in my mind that I was going to do this, so a few weeks before the actual beginning of this, I had a separate activity with the students where we were discussing different types of data.  One of the discussion was for them to vote for their favourite out of the following:

We collected their votes and then the groups had discussions on what that data looks like, what it is, and what they can do with it.

Mario and Pikachu happened to have the same number of votes.

In my head, this was suppose to be a precursor to post-it art that I would be making.  and so I thought - why not make both.

A few weeks later, I made them.

The Monday when students came back, they saw this on the back wall - it's the first thing they see:

Before the bell even starts, they were filled with questions.  Since they were already asking such great questions I started this video as quickly as I could (as soon as all the kids came in)

At this point I get them to write down their questions on the boards.  Here's an example:

As they create the questions, I ask each group to think more about whether an answer that would resolve their question was quantitative or qualitative -- what kind of information would they need... what kind of data would they collect...  and pushing them to think more about exactly what we're doing.  getting them to plan, think, and plan some more.

(edit: when I ask students to generate questions, a lot of people ask me "what do you do with questions that have nothing to do with math?  A full response would merit another post, but basically I recommend honouring all their questions genuinely.  They're interesting questions to them, and so I encourage them to think about them.  Typically the ones that require more thinking time and can be solved more systematically - are mathematical ones)

So then I grabbed their attention again and had them tell me what kinds of information they might need in order to answer their questions.  

Right.  It's their questions.  

With everything I do, I always felt that was key - not only for getting them invested, committed and give them ownership - but also because it's genuinely more interesting that way (to them).

I only had a handful of information, and we had to figure some out on the spot.

For example

They ask me how much they cost -- I slip them this like it's the greatest secret in the world

They ask me how much space each post-it takes up -- I throw them a few post-its to play with

They ask me about time...  well this is where I show them this

It's not nice.

It's not the nice video from @MrOrr_geek where the numbers accumulate in the video.  This is primarily because I didn't know how to do that quickly with Videopad (I should probably ask him at some point), but also because I prefer to make things messy.

So they had the video, they paused, slowed down... paused, played... to get some data.

Here's an example of what one group worked on as they kept going

So you get the idea.

Over the next few days we explore different aspects of their question.  Including breaking down the timelapse app and figuring out how many pictures were taken to make the video (since timelapse was set at a picture every 2 seconds)

They also came up with different rates of their groups: e.g. would it be faster with 2? how much faster?  with three?... etc.

So throughout the few days that we worked on this (I think a week?), on their own they covered measurement and geometry concepts, as well as linear relations.  this is all from questions that they've generated - which is always big for me.  Students used Desmos as well to build their models and make better predictions.

Generally I just floated around, listened to their understanding, prodded for more thinking and throwing disasters in the forms of "what if" in their way - about scaling, covering the whole school, having the whole class do it, what if we were to cover the hallway...etc.

so they did a lot more things with it

And then at the end they shared with each other what they did.  They were encouraged to ask questions to clarify what the groups did (How I do these routines merit another post...  it will come later).

edit: a few weeks later, this article came out and so we had some more fun with extending our knowledge to something like this

So at the very end, I showed them this

Oh yeah, and don't forget throughout all of this, there was also Pikachu!

Here were the three videos I made for Pikachu as well:

A1 normal

A1 with the clock being bigger - for timing purposes

And the final reveal of how long it took in total

So some reflections.

Looking back: What worked for me and what I would recommend (for my future self or anyone else):
1. It was there, they could see it, interact with it, test it, look at it, touch it, feel it.  That was huge.
2. Having materials for them to get more info was helpful (measuring tape, post-its, something to write with...etc)

Looking forward: What I would change
1. One image would probably be enough.  Having two at the same time pulled focus away - and the video was only playing on the computer so it took time away from some groups while they waited to collect their own data.  Perhaps it would be better to throw it on my website so they can use their phones to view video and collect data
2. If there's enough interest - have them plan to make one.  It happened that noone had a similar question like this, but thinking back, I probably could have planted that question somewhere.


What are your thoughts?  What would you do with it?  What would you do to make this chicken dish delicious?