Last winter I decided that I needed to take the plunge and finally present at NCCTM. I had been using Desmos activities regularly in my classroom and even ventured into creating my own activities so I decided to share with my fellow middle school teachers. I couldn’t get into a Desmos training session last summer as I had hoped. I begged and pleaded, but it was not to be. Kristin at Desmos did hook me up with some major swag though! So nice. Pencils, stickers, notepads. My attendees were happy.
I hate going to a PD where I’m told not to teach as a talking head as I am in fact being taught by a talking head. I decided in order for my participants to really get the feel of Desmos activities, I would write my presentation in Activity Builder and they would activity participate that way. Here’s the link:
student.desmos.com Class code: SB73B (Yes, I know I have an error on my card sort. Fix that if you use it.)
We didn’t get through the entire activity in the 45 minute session, but the resource will be there forever for participants to use, copy, modify and train from if they wish. There are so many super good things at learn.desmos.com PD, but I just incorporated a couple of them into my presentation. I had to own it to sell it, you know? I also made a newsletter type handout for my participants. I promised to post it here because it has hot links in it. pd-desmos-newsletter-by-vaughn
Search “NCCTM Middle School Teacher Training by sbvaughn” if you want to copy and modify. One comment on screen 13. I linked to a sampler of activities put together by the Desmos staff. I set it up with the intension that some participants could play the teacher by creating a class code and some could play the students by using that class code. I wanted several minnie classes running throughout the room. Time got the best of me so this didn’t go off as planned.
I want to give special thanks to @heather_kohn who worked through my original presentation and made insightful suggestions for improvement. I, of course, can’t say enough good things about the staff @Desmos. The resources, the swag, the encouragement, the product, the passion, are more than any teacher could have even imagined so I will just say, thank you.
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