Project Based Learning in my math classes.

When approaching this year, I really wanted to push how I can use projects to assist students in learning and using mathematics in real life. As I pushed forward in learning more of what I have access to, I found that some of my resources were limited.  It was also hard to adjust some of these projects without some of the background knowledge or class sizes necessary.  I felt like the classes were either too small, too big, or I honestly could not trust them to stay on task and finish in a realistic time table.

The first big project I introduced was where students in my geometry class created rooms, spaces, or towns only using construction tools. These tools were a compass, ruler, and pencil.  They needed to create a various amount of shapes such as hexagons, pentagons, circles, and triangles.  They were also required to create various forms of lines and angles.  They did very well overall, working in groups of 2 or by themselves.  I had 96% of students finish on time, and 84% of students accurately draw all shapes, angles and lines.

My second project introduced was my End Cap project.  Students were to find the volume and area of the base of fireworks in the shape of cones and cylinders.  They were then required to place these on a 6 foot tall end cap with 2'x4' shelves. They were required to find how much space each firework used and how much space was actually wasted with each set of firework. Before this project, we worked on finding area of circles and rectangles as well as volume of cones and cylinders. After this, I walked them through a couple examples of putting things on shelves.  Even with all this frontloading, students still struggled with the project.  I feel as though maybe I could have broken the project up into multiple parts. Stagger a couple things and then have them put it all together at the end. They just could not comprehend all the information given in the days leading up to the project, then use that information all at once. They could not determine what info to use and when to use that information.  Overall though, I feel as though most students did ok. I did have one group not turn anything in.

The next project was finding the volume of donuts. It was a small little fun as a reward for the hard work as our weekly days were continuously getting missed with snow and activities.  I ordered donuts from Casey's and students were first suppose to estimate the size of the donuts.  Secondly, they needed to try and measure the donuts as well as possible, then re-estimate. Finally, we discussed what the equation for the volume of the donut. Once we found that information, we used the equation and found our volumes.  I then showed, using sand and a cylinder, how we can visually find the volume of the donut.  It was a waste of a donut but it proved my point.  We discussed why our numbers were a little off and then the students ate the their respective donuts.  All in all, it was a good day and the students seemed to have a little more knowledge on what volume is used for.

My final project was having geometry students find a cylinder or spherical product and ship it overseas (not really).  They needed to find the volume of the product, then identify a box that would fit these products.  From there, they needed to find out how many of their boxes would fit a 40x48" pallet. They also need to find the surface area of the box and identify pricing of ording their boxes.  Finally, the students had to identify the price of a shipping container and see how many pallets they could fit in one to ship overseas. After all was said and done, they had to identify the cost of everything and identify how much they would have to increase the cost of their product to make up for all the shipping costs overseas.  Overall, I felt really good about this project. Some students really took off and enjoyed it, while others thought it as too much work and annoying.  I am going to stay on the positive end though and say it was a success. Some minor tweaks for next year and I think this is a good project for years to come.

Overall, with all my projects and everything done, I believe it went really well. I wish I could have done more.  I was able to do a fair amount of online breakout boxes.  Sometimes those didn't seem to be challenging enough, but for some students, I think it helped a lot.  I still feel as though I can continue to expand on what I do every year and I think i really found my niche with a couple of these projects.