I felt like my first venture into “Explore Mathematics!” was so successful last quarter with my Advanced Precalculus kids that I wanted to build upon that. So this is what I’m doing for “Explore Mathematics!: Part II”

• Last quarter students scoured the web and did 5 different mini-explorations which exposed them to all the neat math that exists outside of our standard curriculum. This quarter students will be doing up to two more in-depth explorations.
• Because I don’t want this to be seen as busy work, doing “Explore Mathematics!: Part II” is going to be completely optional. I was glad to read that almost every kid who did the five mini-explorations last quarter didn’t end up finding it busy work, but I suspect doing it a second time would feel tedious.
• To have some sort of incentive for those who do it, I am going to make each of the two explorations worth 12 points. These explorations will count as a mini-assessment (normal assessments are around 50 points). This is useful for kids because our fourth quarter only has 18 days of instructional time (seriously) — so there are only two major assessments and one minor assessment scheduled. Doing these explorations can act as a way to get another mini-assessment grade in there, that will be low-stress, high-reward. [1]
• I’m not framing it around the grade boost it will likely provide, but around the fact that it’s an opportunity to do some awesome math explorations, for anyone who wishes to do so.
• It is still pretty open-ended, but I’m now looking for students to write something to get others to see what they find interesting/intriguing/awesome about something.

Here’s the document I just emailed my kids:

Here it is in .docx form in case you want to modify it.

 

[1] Yes, I do SBG with my calculus kids. Yes, I know how ridiculous this sounds, me playing the “point game.” I almost wanted to make it so that there was no external reward, but our kids are so busy with so many things that I know even a little incentive will go a long way. I’ve been at my school long enough, and know our kids well enough, to know this is doomed to failure without a little external reward.