Mr. Seeley's Amazing Weblog

Welcome, Finn!

mrseeley — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 19:09:39 +0000

Welcome to the newest member of our class, Finnegan Leon Knoblock.

Finnegan had a leading role in Karen K.’s linear story “The Tail of 15 Fish” and now he lives here.

Filed under: Advanced Algebra 1, Projects

Flaws in Standardized Testing? NO!

mrseeley — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:44:02 +0000

Had a conversation this week about the difficulty in focusing on important concepts in lessons, specifically the idea that what might actually be important might not be what will be on that impending standardized test. A school board memeber in Florida took that state’s standardized test, and the results might not be particularly surprising, but I hope they are at least eye-opening…

“I have a wide circle of friends in various professions. Since taking the test, I’ve detailed its contents as best I can to many of them, particularly the math section, which does more than its share of shoving students in our system out of school and on to the street. Not a single one of them said that the math I described was necessary in their profession.”

You can read the rest of the article here.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Penguins and Batman!

mrseeley — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:36:04 +0000

Continuing with the same trend line project that brought us Nivlac…

I left the presentation end of this fairly wide open on this one. Students were invited to create PowerPoints, or type a report, or create a poster — whatever you felt was the best way to get your information across. Thus far, two have stood out.

Great job, Mackenzie and Ryan

It has googly eyes!

That would be pec size over time.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Nivlac

mrseeley — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 20:13:57 +0000

For the last week, students have been working on a trend line project in which they would find or create a set of data that was positively or negatively correlated, use Excel or a web all to create a scatterplot and trend line, and use the equation of the line to make predictions about the situation.

Again, I underestimated the creativity of these kids. I’ll upload some more next week, but I have to share this with you immediately. One student, Calvin, did his project on the growth of a octopus sponge in water over time…and he brought the octopus into class! Meet our new mascot: Nivlac!

Nivlac is Calvin backwards, by the way.

Update: he’s getting BIGGER!

Only four days later!

Filed under: Uncategorized

No Lie, Alligators Are Terrifying.

mrseeley — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 18:12:40 +0000

Look, I don’t know why this was drawn, or whether it’s an alligator or a crocodile…but either way, this exists.

Thanks, Ryan, for wondering what this scene would look like.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Relationships?

mrseeley — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 19:00:11 +0000

While this student (who shall remain nameless) certainly has a good grasp on friendship, I think we still have some work to do on the connection between equations, tables, and graphs…

Cookies!

Filed under: Uncategorized

Scale Model Project

mrseeley — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 18:49:24 +0000

My juniors in Interactive 3 were asked to do a project in which they took any three-dimensional object and created a scale model of it. Mathematically, it was to reinforce that for and scale factor n, all lengths are changed by n, areas by n^2, and volumes by n^3. Realistically, it was so the students could choose to work with something that interested them and maybe learn a bit about the construction of these objects.

Now, there’s a fairly poorly kept secret about me: I’m a fat kid. Therefore, smart students knew the way to my heart (and a good grade) would be to do something related to food. Enter: giant Pop Tart.

...so good...sprinkles...

Great job, Lauren!!!

Filed under: Uncategorized

Welcome!

mrseeley — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 20:38:08 +0000

This blog was originally commissioned as a place to enter our classwork and homework each day. Fortunately, with the coming of OnCourse and TeacherWeb, this was left unnecessary and fell out of date. However, only a month into the school year, I find myself blown away with the quality and creativity of the work being done by my students. I’m a bit of a braggart, but there’s only so many people I can tell each day about the cool projects and jokes that I see and hear each day.

Enter: this blog.

No promises on the frequency or regularity with which this will be updated, but it will be here…so enjoy!

Filed under: Uncategorized