Delta Math

The night I was informed that I would be getting a set of Chromebooks for my classroom, I immediately began searching for additional ways to use them in my math classes. One of the first sites I cam across was this presentation on using Chromebooks in the math classroom. In the presentation was a link to another presentation by Julie Reulbach. This presentation had multiple ways that she used Chromebooks in her math classroom as well as a link to her blog. When I went to her blog, I knew I had jackpot with technology resources that I could use in my high school math class. Here was a teacher, in the same state as me, with the same use of technology, and she was blogging about how she incorporated the technology in her math class.

I began to read back through her blog posts and realized that she had taken part of the MTBoS blogging initiative in January and her post "My Favorite: Delta Math"caught my eye. The website didn't have any fancy graphics but it's capabilities were exactly what I wanted for my freshmen students taking Math 1.

Deltamath is a free online math program that has an vast variety of practice problems that can be assigned to students. The problems range from middle school to calculus with everything in between, I couldn't believe my eyes! Surely, if this program had all of this for free, there had to be some catch. But so far, there has been no catch, it really is a great as it seems!

To date, I have only used Delta Math once in my class, as I've only had my Chromebooks for three school day but my students and I are in love. My students used it on Monday as a way to review for their upcoming test on Systems of Equations and Inequalities.  I created 6 different assignments, each one corresponding to a specific concept, for students to work through. Students were able to pick and choose which assignments they completed, based on where they needed the most practice before the test. (When I do this again, I will make it one long assignment.)

It was easy for my students to register and get started. I was given a teacher code that they entered which linked them to my teacher account, then they entered a valid email address (all of our students have a school email address through google) and a password, then they were ready to solve problems. 

Delta Math allows for differentiation. All of my students were able to complete problems at their ability level and gave them a variety of review questions. Each problem has a "Show Example" feature, where students can click and there will be a similar problem worked out with a detailed explanation of what was done. The example is even color coded, just like I would do in class. 

As the teacher, I loved that I was able to go through and pick topics and that each topic had various levels. For instance, the first level of elimination only included problems where students had to add the two equations. For the second level, students had to multiple one equation by a constant in order for a variable to be eliminated and the third level required students to multiply both equations by a constant and was no longer multiple choice. It is wonderful that Delta Math has such a large amount of leveled practice problems on an assortment of topics.

My students thought the graphing feature was great and easy to use. In order to graph a line, students must plot the y-intercept and then use the rise and run of the slope to plot another point to make the line.  In fact, a few asked if they could use the program on their test, as they would rather graph equations on Delta Math to find the intersection than on their calculator. (I actually prefer them to do it this way as it reinforces the concept of slope and y-intercept, not simply punching buttons on the calculator... but they also need practice with the calculator they will use on their state end of course exam.)

The data I receive from Delta Math is simply amazing. There is a real time problem log where the teacher can see what problems students have attempted, the time and date the did the problem, and their answer. For the data driven teacher, this is a goldmine. You can sort the data by class, student, topic or assignment. 

Data by Skill Set

Data by Assignment

Problem Log sorted by Student

Problem Log - Real Time Feed 

Overall, I'm very pleased with Delta Math, as are my students. A few students have even asked when they will be given another assignment to complete. It's a wonderful site that allows easily for differentiation and a variety of practice problems. I know I'll be using it again in the future. 

Thanks Julie for introducing Delta Math to me! 

Teach My Lesson

So... I'm just a little over a month behind on posting Week 4 of the MTBoS 2016 Blogging Initiative.  What can I say, February was a crazy month for me: there were multiple snow days and delays, I took skiing vacation with my husband to Snowshoe, West Virginia, and I attended a statewide conference on PowerSchool. Regardless, I've finally caught up with my typical school and home duties so I'm able to finish up the post I started weeks ago.

This was the lesson I taught on Wednesday, February 4th, 2016 with my Math 1 students. Prior to this lesson we had been studying linear functions and had on graphs, tables and equations. My students were struggling to see the connections between everything and I wanted an activity to tie everything together.  I went online to see if anything like this was already created and I found this but it didn't have everything I wanted, so I decided to create my own.

In my card sort activity I included the following for 8 problems: slope, y-intercept, graph, table, description of slope, equation in standard form, and equation in slope-intercept form. I originally thought about including distractions but once my students got started, I was glad I didn't. They had enough misconceptions without the distractions! Thanks to @mathymeg07 for introducing me to her favorite, Graph Free, so that I could create readable graphs for my card sort.

 I had students partner off. I didn't want my students working in their groups of  four because I knew that all students would not participate in the discussion.  I was afraid that if I had groups of 4, one or two students would do all the work and the others would contribute very little. Being with a partner forced the students to talk. My directions to students were to get with their partner and to match each graph to the correct slope, y-intercept, equation, etc.   

 Almost every group was able to easily match the equation in slope-intercept form with the graph, except for one set. [I had completed the card sort the night before and realized I didn't have the x-axis and y-axis labeled on my graphs, so it would be troublesome for students to understand the orientation of the graph. As a result, I quickly re-created my graphs but had a mistype in one of the equations. So one graph didn't have a matching equation. Woops!]

Students worked well with their partners to come with the 8 unique sets. However, it seemed like groups could match certain characteristics together, but couldn't always match their parts with the rest of the set. For instance, if students matched the slope-intercept equation with the standard form equation and graph, then matched the table with the slope, y-intercept; they struggled two put the two matches together to make one complete set.  But with a little guidance, students were able to successfully complete their sets. 

I would call this lesson a success! All students were engaged with the task and talking about how to solve it. It took almost the entire 90 minute block to give directions, have students complete the task and then create their display. It was well worth the class time to have students make the connections between the equations, graphs, tables and characteristics of linear functions.

Files to this card sort: word document or PDF
(These files have the correct graphs!)