Student Work

3D Printing Resources Student Work Teaching

3D Printing in Math Class

We were fortunate to receive a 3D printer for use in our math class midway through the last school year. Figuring out how it best worked was fun, and often frustrating.

We enjoyed a variety of successes throughout the spring, printing simple surfaces and some complicated ones, too. It was fascinating to uncover how the printer, and its software and hardware, tackled certain engineering obstacles, like how to print in mid-air!

Ultimately I got comfortable enough to start producing some lesson-specific mathematical objects. This trio of solids I designed worked perfectly as an introduction to Cavalieri’s principle: seeing and holding the objects immediately initiated the conversations I wanted students to have.

By the end of the school year, I felt comfortable enough with the process to run our first official student project. It was fairly open-ended, with options for students, but essentially the idea was to design an object for printing using equations and inequalities.

The project was a success, and here are some of the student designs.

I’m looking forward to exploring some new ideas and projects this year. It’s clear to me that this technology, which is fundamentally mathematical in concept and design, can play a valuable and meaningful role in math class.

By MrHonner, 9 years8 years ago

Art Resources Student Work Teaching

Math Haiku: Geometry Class

I personally enjoy writing, and as a math teacher I love getting my students writing about math.

One of my favorite writing assignments for students is math-themed haiku. The rigid constraints of haiku make it an easy exercise, it allows students to access and interact with mathematical ideas in a different and creative way, and the elegance and efficiency of the for evoke the character of mathematics itself.

Here are some selections from this year’s Geometry class. Enjoy!

We are both equal

We look exactly the same

We are congruent

Postulates assumed

Leading to certain theorems

Web of proof and math

Three lines have converged

Meeting at a single point

They are concurrent

Scalene triangles

Angles are dissimilar

Sides are unalike

CPCTC

A simple explanation

For congruent things

Math is easy now

Calculators do all the work

Sit back and relax

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By MrHonner, 9 years8 years ago

Appreciation Challenge Student Work

Custom Pi Necklace

In honor of Pi Day, here’s a wonderful example of student creativity: a necklace that encodes the first 80 or so digits of pi in beads!

Starting with the pendant as 3, the beads and string clockwise, in a circle, according to the following mapping:

Thus, you can read off 3.14159265358, and so on. A truly thoughtful, creative, and inspired work!

Appreciation Art Geometry Student Work Teaching

Math Art: Student Sliceforms

As a project in my Calculus course, students built sliceforms. Some of them turned out quite beautifully!

Sliceforms highlight the way we can use two-dimensional cross-sections to understand and represent surfaces in three dimensions.

You can see more examples of student sliceforms here, on my Facebook page.

By MrHonner, 12 years8 years ago

Resources Student Work Teaching

Writing in Math Class: Peer Review

Students do a lot of writing in my math classes, and regular peer review plays an invaluable role in its success.

Good peer review doesn’t just provide a second or third set of eyes on student work. Regular peer review helps students understand the importance of clarity and structure in writing, while showing them different ways to achieve those goals. Peer review exposes students to the diverse creativity, both in ideas and expression, of their classmates. And it plays a powerful and pivotal role in establishing a culture of collaboration in the classroom.

I always believed these things, but it wasn’t until I heard my students say them that it really hit home just how important peer review was. And they might not have said these things if I hadn’t asked them to write about it. Here are some of their thoughts.

“Giving feedback to other classmates helped me because I was also giving feedback to myself and thinking about what I had to improve on while helping them.”

“All of the interesting ideas that people were coming up with for their papers … it was a nice experience to see all of their creativity.

“As I was reading other papers, I realized that there were other ways to get my point across easier.”

“After telling my colleagues what they should do to improve their paper such as making specific sections, making more analysis, giving more examples and being more clear, it gave me some ideas for my paper and I went back to check whether I had done what I said to others.”

“I saw that some of the mistakes that they made were also in my paper, like how the tables were cut off and made it hard to understand. I also saw how they organized their term paper and when I compared it to mine, I saw a lot faults in it.”

“Giving others suggestions for their extensions and their paper in general has helped me think of more topics to write about for my own project. I think this process helped everyone in a way.”

“Helping my colleagues with their papers helped me, because the collaboration led to a more enriching environment; I helped a classmate and in return, that classmate helped me, and I think we both benefited greatly from the collaboration.”

Teaching students to provide effective, constructive, and positive feedback to each other doesn’t happen overnight, but it is well worth the effort. For me, few teaching strategies have paid as many dividends in my classroom.

For more resources, see my Writing in Math Class page.

By patrick honner, 12 years8 years ago

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