The answer to the joke (What is a math teacher’s favorite tree?) is Geometry. You can find all of my math jokes here. And, if you want the printable Math Joke of the Week posters, I have those available as a free download, too!

To make the magnets for my Unit Circle, I typed up all of the degrees, radians, and ordered pairs. I printed them on three different colors of paper and laminated them.

I buy my disc magnets in bulk from Amazon. They are super strong magnets, and they come with little sticky circles to make them super easy to stick to things. These are the same magnets I use for my puzzles.

At the beginning of the year, I will just be using the degree and radian magnets with my Pre-Calc students.

I want to create a set of station activities related to the unit circle. One of the stations will have groups of students who have to place all of the magnets in the correct place on the unit circle without using any references.

I can also see myself passing out magnets to random students as they walk in the classroom. Then, as the lesson proceeds we will work together to build the unit circle.

There are just so many possibilities. I also have lots of other magnets in mind to use with this, but I haven’t got around to making them yet…

You could also just print the cards and use them for various activities without any magnets at all! I might print off a few more sets to have students practice with in the floor.

They won’t have a circle to build on, but they could still practice laying everything out where it belongs.

I decided to incorporate some origami into our classroom time. I love doing origami with students, and it was nice to bring back a hands-on element to my classroom. Doing everything virtually has been extremely hard for me because most of my go-to activities involve things that aren’t permitted during a pandemic.

I posted a link to how to make a sonobe origami unit on google classroom. Soon, we were constructing tetrahedrons, cubes, colliding cubes, and octahedrons.

A few of my students used this as an opportunity to create some origami objects that they had learned how to create elsewhere. Soon these origami “gifts” were piling up on my desk. I decided to empty off my bulletin board and use it as a place to highlight student origami.

There are only three pieces on it so far, but I hope that it encourages other students to explore some origami. Annoyingly, I had students create a lot more origami than this, but modular origami does not really lend itself to being displayed on a bulletin board.

We explored making tetrahedrons (Toshie’s Jewel) with varying sizes of square paper. The first is made with 8.5″ squares. The second is made with 2.5″ squares (off-cuts from making the first). The final one was made by a student with a 1 inch squares.

Two other students set off to create a 60 piece sonobe creation. They didn’t exactly end up with the shape that they were expecting.

Check out the side view.

I’d forgotten just how much of a mess my room becomes when I do origami. It’s worth it, though.

Instead of focusing on what I don’t like about our textbook, I decided to look through the textbook for something I did like. I skipped over all the examples and stuff and went straight to the questions. Guess what, there were some great questions there!

Once I started looking for the things that would be helpful instead of the things I hated, my mood turned completely around. For the first time this summer, I was able to start thinking about exactly what I want my Algebra 2 class to be.

Looking through the second unit on quadratics, I got distracted. I remembered reading something on twitter that I had included in one of the early, early, early volumes of Monday Must Reads (Volume 4 to be exact!)

What I said about teaching my students that roots, solutions, zeros, and x-intercepts is definitely true. I didn’t know that there was any difference myself, so I never thought to teach my students that these words meant slightly different things.

And, I went on with teaching and life not knowing any better until this tweet ran across my radar. Of course, by the time it did, I was no longer teaching Algebra 2. So, I saved it away in a Monday Must Reads post until it would come in handy once again.

Now that I’m teaching Algebra 2 and Pre-Calc next year, I’m thinking once again about these topics AND I’m thinking about how to decorate my new classroom.

Matt shared an awesome visual last year that also made it’s way into my Monday Must Reads post.

The more I teach math, the more I realize the importance of teaching students to use precise vocabulary. And, I want to continue this with my Algebra 2 and Pre-Calc classes this year.

So, I set off to take Matt’s visual and make it into a poster that could decorate my new classroom.

Here’s what I came up with.

I was feeling pretty proud of my poster design, so I decided to share the posters on twitter. And, wow, what a response! 19 Replies, 78 Retweets, and 362 likes later (as of the time of this writing), I now realize that this is a very contentious topic.

Most people seem to be okay with solutions, zeros, and x-intercepts. Roots, though. Peoples’ thoughts on when you should and shouldn’t use the word “roots” is all over the place.

From what I can tell, there isn’t a clean cut, right or wrong answer. People pretty much use the words however they want. And, we’re all pretty attached to our opinions.

Until I know better, this is the version I’m going with. And, I think that’s the approach we all need to have in education. We teach what we know until we know better.

Maya Angelou said it better: “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” 

That being said, I’m about to share my posters both as a PDF and as an editable Publisher file.

If you use the terminology slightly differently in your classroom, please feel free to edit these to match what you believe to be best. 

No matter how you decide to use these words in your classroom, I think we would all benefit from thinking critically about the vocabulary we use and ask our students to use in our classrooms. 

Normally, I would print posters like this on 11 x 17 cardstock. But, I’m not sure if I will have the capability of printing on that size of paper at my new school. So, I’ve also created an 8.5 x 11 version. 

I combined these posters with the function expression equation poster my husband created to create a bulletin board.

Covalent Compound Close-Ups

Sadly, the index cards didn’t photograph very well. The students color-coded their writing on the index cards to match the pipe cleaner colors that they chose to represent each element.

Each student was assigned a different covalent compound to model.

The idea to model these compounds with pipe cleaners and pony beads is thanks to Kristy Turner who originally shared the idea on twitter. She has since published an article about this activity that can be found here.

It was interesting to watch my students go through the process of figuring out which electrons had to be shared to make sure each atom had a full octet of electrons.

My chemistry students really enjoyed this activity, and the students who were absent and missed it were very sad when they saw the finished products.

My Algebra students have been very intrigued by the bulletin board. I’m not sure they realize that they have to do with chemistry because one student said they wanted to get to make a bracelet like the ones on the wall!

Chromatography Butterflies Bulletin Board

Before I go any further, I have to share our chromatography butterflies bulletin board we ended up creating. I titled the bulletin board “Chromaflies.”

Want to make all of your algebra students hate you? Tell them that they aren’t allowed to make their own chromatography butterflies because they are in algebra, not chemistry.

Supplies for Chromatography Butterflies

To make your own chromatography butterflies, you’ll need coffee filters, markers, water, and a container to hold your experiment. We used both plastic beakers and plastic cups.

My students found that the experiment worked faster in a cup than a beaker. One group of students did their first coffee filter in a beaker and their second in a cup. The one in the cup finished first despite being started last! 

For the markers, I have found that Expo Vis a Vis markers and Mr. Sketch markers work the best. Highlighters, Sharpies, and Dry Erase Markers do not work.

Step by Step Directions for Chromatography Butterflies

To begin, flatten your coffee filter.

Make a design around where the circle is at the bottom of the coffee filter. You don’t want your design to extend any closer to the center of the circular coffee filter than this circle.

Here’s my example. I used blue and black vis a vis markers.

Once your design is finished, fold your coffee filter in half and half again like you are preparing to make a snowflake.

Unfold it a bit, but make sure you keep the point at the bottom of the coffee filter.

Place just a small bit of water (solvent) in the bottom of your cup or beaker. Place your coffee filter in so that ONLY the tip is touching the water. It is important that none of the ink touches the water.

If the ink does touch the water, the ink will spread to the water instead of the coffee filter.

Here are a few that were messed up due to the ink touching the water.

Once the coffee filter is in the water, the waiting game begins. At this point, I have my students read an article and answer some questions about chromatography. Even though we’re not doing a technical chromatography lab, I still want my students to understand what chromatography is and how it is used in laboratories.

As students read about chromatography in the article, they get to see it in action.

Here’s mine (the one with the dots and stars) after a few minutes: 

Many inks are not made up of just a single color of ink. Some of the ink colors are more attracted to the water traveling through the coffee filter. These ink colors will move up. Other ink colors are more attracted to the coffee filter than the water. These will show up lower on the coffee filter.

Enjoy these pictures of our chromatography experiments in progress.

Watch closely until the water reaches the edges of the coffee filter. Now, it’s time to pull out the designs and place them on paper to dry.

Remember my design with the circles and stars? It’s the bottom design in the picture below.

Here’s some pictures of my chemistry students’ finished designs. It was awesome to hear them notice how the colors of their final design differed from the original colors of markers they had used. One girl exclaimed, “Where did the pink come from? I used orange!”

There were wet coffee filters on almost every flat surface of my classroom!