August is here and that can only mean one thing – the first day of school is right around the corner. No more leisurely days spent watching the kids play in the yard or planning trips to the beach and/ or mountains (I’m a mountain girl more than a beach girl myself). Nope, it is time to focus (and find those darn work shoes).
This summer I made it my goal to focus on incorporating more fun & engaging activities for my Calculus students. I know they’d love them, and they see my Algebra students doing fun things like “Partner Activities” and digital escape rooms and this year I’d like them to have that experience too (and so would they).
I know Calculus students love engaging activities – but for some reason, maybe because we have so much to get through, I go right into direct teaching mode with my Calculus class. A method of teaching that I don’t really love.
I decided to review the curriculum to brainstorm activities I could plan for the beginning of the year, throughout the year, and end of course review.
Beginning of the Year
Movie Night: Begin the year with a movie night by selecting a movie that demonstrates the application of calculus in a real-world context and have a class discussion following the movie. You could even have the students research jobs that use Calculus and pick one that interests them to create a poster for. You can keep these up in the room year round and discuss as concepts are taught. Two of my favorite movies to show my Calculus class are:
- Stand & Deliver: Still my favorite based on the true story of a high school mathematics teacher, Jaime Escalante, who taught Calculus to students who thought they could not be successful in math, much less Calculus.
- Hidden Figures: Math (and Calculus) are at the forefront in this one – Euler’s method and how it’s applied to differential equations specifically.
Daily Math Warmups: This is something I have done with every other course I teach but I just started implementing it in Calculus. Using daily warmups is a fantastic way to set the tone as soon as students walk in your classroom, and I am a HUGE proponent of using them as part of a classroom management plan. You can create a problem or set of problems each morning and have it on the board as students walk in or you can make them all ahead of time. Set the expectation that students will have a certain amount of time to complete the problem or problems on the board, so they should come in and get right to work. I wrote one problem set each day for the entirety of the course and saved all of them. I then used my saved warmups to create a course-long PowerPoint of warmups for Calculus 1. Each problem consisted of a concept previously taught one specifically chosen to help with the day’s topic or one that is a chronic struggle for students and needed for understanding Calculus – Hello composition functions. Here is the final product:
Throughout the Year
Digital Self-Checking Activities: I recently purchased a Genially subscription and taught myself how to make self-checking activities. These are fantastic as they don’t let the students move on to the next slide until all of the questions are answered correctly. I plan on making these for all of the pivotal concepts: limits, derivatives, integrals, area between curves, & differential equations. You can get a free subscription at: https://genial.ly/
Here are some I’ve created already:
Partner Activities: These are something I use in my Algebra and Algebra 2 classes all the time. You take a concept and create pairs of items that both have the same answer. Call one set Problem Set A and the other Problem Set B – and have students work in pairs. Since the students know that each set has the same answer, they check each other’s answers – if their answers match, they are good. If their answers don’t match, they must work together to determine who is correct. These activities produce the most amazing conversations you will hear in a math class. I walk around the room during this activity and hear things such as “Oh yeah, I used to make that mistake ALL the time, here is how I finally understood it…” I LOVE hearing students discuss math and I find that these worksheets create the most productive student dialogue. I have only made one of these for Calculus, a derivatives partner activity, but will make more this summer for sure!
Kahoot Quiz-Style Games: Kahoot makes it so easy to create engaging game-style assessments. I have a teacher account with Kahoot but again – rarely use it to make activities. This summer I am going to plan ahead and Create a Kahoot! quiz game for each of the major concepts in Calculus. You can let your students play individually but I break my classes up into teams to see who can get the highest score.
End of Course Review
Cumulative Digital Escape Room: If you’re like me, you give your students multiple end of year reviews, ESPECIALLY if your students are taking the AP exam. I mean, they’re called “high stakes tests” for a reason. While I know my students appreciate multiple opportunities to review the concepts from the course, SOME of them have to be a break from the normal “drill & kill” practice. Digital escape rooms are a fun and engaging way to provide this review. They offer an immersive and engaging alternative to a traditional assessment review and hold students’ attention more than worksheets ever could. I have one year-end review for my Calculus students but intend to make additional year end escape rooms with more games and puzzles embedded throughout like my Algebra escape rooms.
Jeopardy Style Games: I know Jeopardy style games could be used all year long, but they are so time consuming to create that I am going to reserve these for end of year review. Create a Jeopardy style game in PowerPoint that covers all the major Calculus 1 topics & break students into teams to compete for prizes – (my kids compete for candy). There are several Jeopardy templates online, but I make mine by using the insert table function to create the main gameboard (5 columns by 5 rows) and use links to each question slide. Make the question slides with the corresponding answer slides, be sure to include links back to the main gameboard on the question slides.
In the end my plan is to create more opportunities for my Calculus students to work together and collaborate. I want to create fun and engaging activities that reinforce the key concepts that are taught throughout the year. The more engaging the activities, the easier it is for students to retain the information. What are some of your favorite types of engaging activities? What will you incorporate in your Calculus class this year?