Category Archives: Amanda Jain

AP Statistics Posters are up in the Inner Court

Posted on by

You may have noticed that the beautiful AP Statistics Research Posters are on display in the Inner Court.  Please stop by to take a look at their great work and to see how our community feels and behaves regarding a wide variety of topics.

The students did all of the work themselves.  As part of this project they:

  • Researched a topic of interest to them
  • Designed and built a survey using Google Forms.
  • Selected a random sample of participants using Minitab Express Statistical Software.
  • Administered the survey via email.
  • Analyzed and cleaned the data using Minitab Express Statistical Software.
  • Designed and built their research-style poster using Powerpoint.
They are very proud of their work.  If you teach any of these researchers, it would mean a lot if you could tell them you read their poster and engage them in dialogue about their findings.

Gamifying the French Classroom

Posted on by

Last year, I attended a workshop put on by the French Consulate entitled “Gamifying the French Classroom.” It was interesting but not as practical as I would have liked–most of the games were for purchase or required software I don’t have.

Ever since attending that workshop last April, I’ve been trying to think of how to bring more of a gamified feel to my projects and units. Students respond well to Quizlet Live, Kahoot, and Jeopardy! in my classroom, so why not make learning more entertaining and ultimately more engaging? After reading Amanda’s blog in the fall about her final exam review passport (and also attending her group’s Grab-and-Go PD session last month), I felt compelled to rethink my finals review as we wind down the year and make the push towards exam week.

Let me back up a few steps first. For the final unit of the year in French 3, I’ve decided to modify the traditional food unit and teach students about food trucks, regional French cuisine, and the food truck culture in Paris which I experienced firsthand over the past three summers working in Paris.

I called my unit “The Great Food Truck Race.” To determine their groups for this final unit and project, students selected from random cards I made with French regions written on them. Earlier this week, they researched their assigned regions, local cuisine, and points of interest. From there, each group designed an origial food truck and a logo after learning about their regional cuisine. I think they’ve been having fun with the project-based learning aspects of this unit, but I wanted to tap into the “race” aspect of this unit as we make our way to finals week.

And that’s when it struck me. Instead of doing a “finals review” week or a few random days here and there, why not design an entire unit around a series of review activities?

The idea is simple: each week, I am hosting a series of competitions that really aren’t much different from the typical language exercises, activities, and worksheets we’ve been working on all year. The only difference is how I’m framing these competitions.

I’ve set up a Google Spreadsheet that the students have access to in order to keep a running tally of how many points they score during each competition which constitutes the ongoing “food truck race.” By the end of these next three weeks, the group with the most amount of points will earn a small bonus on the final exam. I introduced the rules earlier this week and the excitement which greeted my announcement was unlike anything I’ve seen all year. You would have thought I’d told them they could be on their phones every class from here on out…

The “competitions” include the following activities (along with several more I’m still mentally figuring out):

  • The Price is Right game in French to review food words, quantities, and numbers
  • A Jeopardy! review of food vocab from French 1-2
  • An upcoming quiz on the conditional mood we covered during the fall semester (which I’ll let them take in partners and score purely for race points and not for the overall grade)
  • Subjunctive verb conjugation speed races to review material from two units ago
  • Instagram challenges in which I’ll assign a task and judge the videos based on creativity and use of language
  • Speaking quizzes (formerly known as “oral exams”)
  • And then more traditional assignments for this current food truck unit such as creating a realistic menu, hosting an “interview” with a local journalist and their food truck, writing up an in-class business proposal without the assistance of Google Translate or a French-English dictionary, researching French outdoor games and proposing a special Happy Hour with games of their choosing, and so forth.

After only two in-class competitions, I’m already seeing more participation and engagement than I’ve seen in past classes. I hope the momentum continues into the remaining weeks, but so far it’s been fun to teach and keeps me on my toes in terms of thinking about how to make each review session more successful, engaging, and fun!

And best of all, I’m tricking my students into studying and fully participating in French.

For now, I leave you with some of their initial food truck designs as their posts are trickling in all weekend.

Math meets Art meets Mission

Posted on by

Have you seen the beautiful art created by my PreCalculus students hanging in the Inner Court for the Winton Arts Fest?  I asked the students to reflect on what defines a Carondelet or DLS student, using the schools’ mission statements as well as their own experience.  They then created a picture that exemplified their chosen aspect of the community using only graphs of the Algebraic functions covered throughout the year.  They utilized Desmos and Geogebra to create these creative and beautiful mathematical pieces of art.


They are hanging in the corner nearest to room 2. Please take a look at their work as well as their reflections. Some are touching and insightful, others challenge us to do better as a community. I love that this project used the power of Math and functions (yes, they are so much more than just formulas!) to visually communicate their deep and personal connections to our community.



Here’s a sneak peek of a few:




One group even made me out of graphs of functions and wrote words that I will cherish forever.  Doesn’t get much better than that!







From Blogging to … Published!

Posted on by

Many of you can probably guess that I REALLY like blogging.  No, I don’t have a lot of time on my hands.  In fact right now I have a laundry list of other things I really should be doing.  But, for me, blogging is like a form of therapy, a chance to slow down, reflect and take a few minutes to just breathe.  I love having the chance to process how things are going in my classes, and even how things are going with my relationships with my students and colleagues.  I also love getting everyone’s feedback on the things I’m thinking about/processing/struggling with.  It helps me feel connected to people I don’t normally get to connect with, even if on a virtual platform. 

Last year I got the idea to try to turn some of my blogs into an article for publication.  I worked really hard on a draft I was super proud of and had the amazing Joan Tracy read it over and, with her help, made it even better.  I submitted to Mathematics Teacher, the journal associated with the National Council of Mathematics Teachers.  In May I found out it was rejected.  Not even a revise and resubmit.  Nope, flat out rejection.  Their comments were super helpful and valid.  And, I realized I really had no idea what I was doing when it came to trying to get published.  Mathematics Teacher is a pretty high caliber publication.  Maybe I needed to start with a slightly smaller journal. 

Turns out California has its own publication, called the Communicator, managed by the California Mathematics Council.  It’s still a peer-reviewed journal, but the scope is limited to California.  They had a call out for articles related to alternative forms of assessment.  I took many of the blogs I had written about my work with my Algebra 2 girls, and in particular my decision to give a challenging group test each chapter, and turned it into a submission.  And, yay!  it was accepted. 

I share this with you for a couple of reasons:
1.  Yes, full disclosure, I’m proud!
2.  If you blog a lot here, think about turning some of your writing into a submission article.  Share your great ideas with the larger academic community.
3.  If you haven’t given blogging a try or haven’t seen the point, maybe this might give you motivation.
4.  I’ll be giving a talk at our 4/12 PD day about group tests, the subject of this article.  If you want to know more, please come. 
5.  Huge thanks to Elizabeth, Joan, and Christina (maybe others too?) who started and manage this blog.  I really do think it’s a great part of toolbox as teachers.

Here’s a link to the article if you’d like to read it.

Odyssey of the Mind Update: We failed and it was awesome!

Posted on by

Odyssey of the Mind was this past Saturday and our inaugural team of five did amazing!  Everything they planned was executed perfectly. It went as well as we could have hoped for.  Yet, we lost big time, I mean BIG.  Our competition blew us out of the water.  Even more surprising, we still advanced to the State tournament.  Have I hooked you to keep reading?

In the Math department we make a big deal about celebrating mistakes and failure, because that’s when you really learn.  Our first attempt at this Odyssey competition was a perfect example of this.  Our first failure came when we had to weigh in our structure.  The structure had to weigh less than 15g and there was a 5 point penalty for every .1g over.  At weigh-in our structure weighed 15.6g.  That was a 30 point penalty.  Ouch.  Instead of just penalizing our team, the judges were amazing and started a dialogue about what the team might do to correct this error.  It was raining that day and the girls talked about how the damp air might have made the structure heavier.  From this they got the idea that they might be able to dry it out with a bathroom hand-dryer.  One of our team-members ran over to the nearest bathroom but unfortunately there was only a paper-towel dispenser.  The judges continued to press.  What else could we do to lower our weight?  While they didn’t feel they could remove any pieces without compromises the integrity of the structure, another member thought that they could perhaps shave off a layer of the pieces.  They spent 20 minutes in a corner shaving and got the structure down to 15.2g.  Much better!  I loved the learning that happened in this exchange. 

Then came the performance.  Their competitors went immediately before us.  I decided to watch it.  The girls decided to pass as they had to perform right after.  Let me tell you about this team we were up against:  they were clearly a well-oiled Odyssey success team.  Their set was sparkly and glittery and full of motorized parts and blinking lights.  While we built a low-resolution “lacrosse stick” to toss our structure, they built an air rocket!  Here’s a still shot from our performance.  I love it’s raw quality but in contrast to our competitor, it didn’t match up. 

But what was most devastating was when it came time for them to test the weight of the structure.  My jaw kept dropping as they put on more and more weight.  Their structure held 655 lbs!  I’m still amazed by this.  How much did our structure hold, you ask?  60 lbs.  Here is Olivia testing our structure for strength:

While they obviously killed us with the weight held, we actually beat them at the Spontaneous problem component of the competition.  We also tied them for style.  Our girls talked to the judges a lot at the end and understand better now how to build a stronger structure (apparently our main flaw was in the glue used.  And the girls were already buzzing with ideas for new designs that would be stronger as well).  Again, look at all of this learning from our failure! 

Obviously, they took first place and we took second (yes, there were only two teams in our division).  By default, we both advance to the state tournament.  Another team might decide to just pass given this initial defeat, but not our girls.  Even though we only have three weeks until the state tournament on March 30th, our girls are going for it.  They’re determined to build a stronger structure and beef up their performance to get more points and give that other team a run for their money.   When faced with failure, they’re choosing to learn from it instead of accepting defeat.  Look forward to another follow-up post after the State tournament!

Here’s a link to their performance. 

Odyssey of the Mind is this Saturday, March 2nd!

Posted on by

Did you know that this year, for the first time ever (I think?), Carondelet has an Odyssey of the Mind team?  From their website:

Odyssey of the Mind is an international creative problem-solving program that engages students in their learning by allowing their knowledge and ideas to come to life in an exciting, productive environment. Participants build self-confidence, develop life skills, create new friendships, and are able to recognize and explore their true potential. OotM proves that students can have fun while they learn.


Odyssey problems have challenged students to design mechanical dinosaurs, invent new factory machinery, build working vehicles, write a new chapter to Moby Dick, put a twist on classic artworks, turn Pandora’s Box into a video game, and so much more.
Since 1978, OotM problems have challenged students to go beyond conventional thinking and incorporate creative problem solving in learning. Creative Problem Solving is a skill that needs to be nurtured and developed. While a conventional education is important, learning to solve problems creatively and confidently gives them an important edge in their education and career goals. There is creativity inside each of us and OotM teaches how to tap into it so it can be applied to real-world problems.


Our team is made up of five amazing students:  Juniors Mykenzie Clark, Liana Huerta, Dani Baur, Olivia Pinto and Freshman Lauren Roach.  They’ve been working hard since December, meeting every afternoon x-block past 4pm and many weekends to complete their task.  Their problem was to design a structure made out of only balsa wood and glue that weighs less than 15 g but that can withstand the weight of 40 lbs or more (and they earn points the more weight their structure can hold).  They also have to toss their structure with a goal of getting maximum height and distance (and ensuring their structure won’t break).  And they have to present all of this within an 8 minute creative skit.  They’ve come up with an amazing Medieval story that has at its core the power of women and feminism.  





If you are free, they will be competing at Concord High School on Saturday March 2nd at 2:50 pm.  They’d love to have your support.  Please let me know if you plan to attend and I can help you navigate to their performance location.  


Go Cougars!

That’s your job, Mrs. Jain!

Posted on by

When I give a Math test, I generally don’t answer questions.  Why?  Because students are really good at tricking their teachers into doing problems for them.  We, as teachers, care about our students so when a student comes up really struggling, “I just don’t know where to start” or “I don’t understand why my answer isn’t working”, it’s really tempting to show them how to start or to find their mistake for them.  And this creates a really slippery slope.  There’s all sorts of factors (relationship with student, type of student (did they do their homework?), student’s emotional level (are they crying?) ) that can bias the amount of help we give one student compared to another.  To make my life simple, and to keep things objective and fair, I follow a simple rule that I don’t offer any help to anyone on a test.  I also do this to honor the integrity of the test.  A test should measure what the student knows, on her own, without me scaffolding and guiding the way. 

I do, however, let students ask as many questions as they want.  They just know to not expect an answer from me.  I find that just the process of speaking their question out loud helps many of them to find their way.  For others, they’re hoping I’ll accidentally crack and answer their question but I try really hard not to.  For example, if a student comes up and says, “I got an answer of 2 but when I plug it back in, it doesn’t work.  I don’t know why.”,  I’ll might say, “Awesome, you realized you made a mistake!  Your brain just grew!  Now, go try to find and correct your mistake.”  This celebrates the struggle involved in learning and hopefully gives them the pep talk they need to solve their own problems.  To be honest though, they mostly walk away annoyed.  Some persevere through it, others just give up.

Yesterday, one of my more (shall we say outgoing?) students was coming up regularly with questions and returning to her seat loudly annoyed that I wouldn’t help her.  Twice she exclaimed, “It’s your job to teach me, Mrs. Jain!” as she returned to her seat.  It was with humor, but there was truth to it too.  It’s still bothering me today which is why I’m writing this post.  I’m thinking about what Jess said in our department meeting yesterday that our students are getting quite bold, and saying that out loud in class, albeit with humor, feels quite bold and bordering on inappropriate.  Do you ever feel like the students think we’re their employees?

I gently told her that I am teaching her, I’m teaching her how to figure things out on her own,  how to apply the skills we learned in class to problems on her own.  Self-reliance and resourcefulness are such important skills.  I won’t always be there with her and we as teachers will not always be there with our students as they encounter problems in the world outside Carondelet.  I’m thinking about all of the pushback that we’re receiving with our new Algebra program surrounding how (if) we’re teaching.  How can we get students to understand that the best way to teach them, and the best way for them to learn, is if we give them the skills to figure things out on their own instead of giving them (showing them) the path to the right answer? 

The coolest (pun intended!) piecewise function that I ever did see! (But didn’t have time to explore).

Posted on by

In Precalculus we’re covering trigonometric functions (sin, cos, etc).  These functions are periodic in nature (meaning their pattern repeats over time) and can be used to model all sorts of real life scenarios that do the same.  I was planning to do a challenge problem today in class from the book that uses these functions to model ocean tides.  See book problem:

While it’s a fine problem, I had an experience over the weekend that has made me change course (I love when this happens!).  I was shopping at a store with my family that had a sign in the window, “Open 24 hours.”  My 6 year old daughter asked what that meant and I tried to explain to her that there are 24 hours in a day and that the store never closes.  She then asked when does the 24 hours start, which is such an interesting question!, and I was trying to explain that you can start and stop the 24 hours wherever you want:  from 3am to 3am, from 10pm to 10pm, etc. and I realized (because I’ve got trig on my brain) that it’s a lot like a sine or cosine function.  And from there, a much cooler problem was born.  I decided to share this story with my Precalculus students and do our own trigonometric curve modeling to data that is periodic over a 24 hour period:  weather/temperature data. 

I decided to do as little of the problem setup as I could, based in part by a fabulous Ted Talk by Dan Meyer.  I also genuinely prefer class activities that feel less like a perfectly set-up textbook problem and more like a messy, real-life scenario.  I planned to have them collect temperature data for Walnut Creek (via weather.com) over a 24 hour period and to start with a graph of the points. 

Here’s what we came up with:

I asked the students to comment on how this looked like a trig function and how it didn’t.  Let’s start with the ways it looks like a trig function.  Here’s where the math skills kicked in.  We used our knowledge of transformations to build a trigonometric function that matched these observations made by the students:

  • It looked like the cosine function (see small graph on left) shifted over 4 units.  
  • The period was 24 hours (i.e. how long before the pattern repeats)
  • The amplitude was larger (i.e. the difference from average temperature to the maximum or minimum temperature)
  • The average temperature was 49.5 degrees (and they realized they could average the maximum and minimum to find this).  
We incorporated all of these facts to get this beautiful function and curve:
Then we checked a few points to see how well the curve fit our data.  This is where it got interesting.  In some places, the curve did not fit our data well at all.  That’s when we talked again about the ways in which the data did not look sinusoidal:
  • A student spoke up, qualifying that what she was trying to say was hard to explain, that the graph wasn’t balanced.  (Side note:  Isn’t great when our students have to struggle to communicate what they see?  Instead of me directing them with my own language and they then repeating, it was awesome to leave the question open ended and force them to have to develop their own language).  She was absolutely right.  The temperature cooled down much more quickly when the sun was out than overnight.  This is an instance where are data was not sinusoidal. 
  • We also talked about the fact that sinusoidal functions perfectly repeat over time and that doesn’t happen with weather data.  The high one day is not necessarily the high the next day.  
What I had wanted to do, but we ran out of time because the discussion up to this point was so rich, was share what I found when I did a quick google search for whether weather data is really sinusoidal.  I found this little gem.  It’s basically the coolest application of a piecewise function I’ve ever seen!
“Although using hourly weather data offers the greatest accuracy for estimating growing degree-day values, daily maximum and minimum temperature data are often used to estimate these values by approximating the diurnal temperature trends. This paper presents a new empirical model for estimating the hourly mean temperature. The model describes the diurnal variation using a sine function from the minimum temperature at sunrise until the maximum temperature is reached, another sine function from the maximum temperature until sunset, and a square-root function from then until sunrise the next morning. “  Full Article Here.  

I did share this with them and we talked very briefly about the fact that weather data is sinusoidal, but it’s more complicated than that.  Temperature varies in three distinct pieces:  sinusoidal from sunrise to high temperature, a different sinusoidal model from high temperature to sunset and then a third piece to cover from sunset to sunrise that is modeled by a square root function.  It pains me that I couldn’t spend another day on this project.  This year we’ve covered piecewise functions and square root functions they have all of the skills to build this very realistic non-cookie-cutter model.  

And, perhaps this is a topic for a future blog/discussion:  how do we make time for these unexpected projects that require time when we work in a system with courses with already full scope and sequences?  Can (should) we swap quality for quantity?  My own bias tells me that doing deep, complicated projects like these will have a lasting impact, both on their retention of the specific skill (in this case trigonometric functions) but also on their perspective of the world around them.  The perspective that math can model the world around them, but it’s often not simple, often requires more than one equation/formula/function, and often it’s not something that can be solved in a 45 or even 80 minute period.  

Exam Review Success!

Posted on by

It’s that time of year again when we are wrapping up our courses and expecting our students to be reviewing and solidifying all of the material we covered in preparation for the semester final exam. At this point, we as teachers are really burnt out and it’s so tempting to just provide free periods and a review packet. That’s what I did last year, and the results weren’t pretty. I really underestimated my student’s ability to self-motivate and handle a large body of information all at once.  They’re as burnt out as we are and with the flexibility of free periods, many wasted the periods or used them really ineffectively.

This year I was determined to push myself to try something different and to not leave my students to handle review on their own.  I wanted them to have to complete tasks and achieve a certain mastery goal per chapter, before moving on to a new chapter. In talking casually with Kristina Levesque, she mentioned that she had used a passport style of review before and this idea really resonated with me.  I want my students to feel that learning math is a journey, an experience, so what better analogy to this is the idea of having a passport to document their journey back through the chapters we’ve covered.

I created a passport with a combination of three components each chapter:  [1] Make a Chapter-specific study guide, [2] Correct any errors on the chapter test, and [3] do an online review problem component.  [In AP Statistics there was an added component to do an online free response problem per chapter]. I gave them a full week class periods and no additional homework to complete the passport with a due date of Friday December 14th.  

Here’s a little more on each component:

[1] Study Guide:  Each day I offered an optional workshop of a review of a chapter we had covered.  If they wanted to attend the workshop, they could write down what I said and call that their study guide.  These workshops were quite brief, however, and most students found success making their own study guide beforehand and then filling in any gaps covered in my workshop.  I put the to-be-covered topics on the board at the beginning of class with the time my workshop would start.




[2] Test Corrections:  While some teachers require their students to correct tests upon their return, I’ve never been organized enough to coordinate that.  But, I think this ended up being a blessing in disguise! It was so great to watch students go back to old tests and wrestle with their errors, with the not being fresh in their mind.  Another neat (frustrating?) component was that if a student had lost their test, I gave them a blank test to do again.  I told them this was like losing their parking garage ticket: they have to pay full price. But, as I told them, think of how lucky they are to get to do all of that practice!

[3] Online practice:  This was probably my favorite component.  There are so many great online platforms and I was able to find different ones to meet the needs of all of my different classes.  In PreCalculus, I used MyMathLab which we use anyway as a homework supplement. This program had pre-made Chapter posttests which I was able to edit based on what we had covered.  In AP Statistics, I used Kahn Academy which has instruction, quizzes and tests already made for our course topics. I assigned the topic tests for each of our topics. In Algebra 2 I made my own quizzes using GoFormative.com, a super easy (and free!) platform to create auto-gradable quizzes and practice.

What I like about all three of these is that they all promote a growth mindset: students are given immediate feedback (and in some cases hints) and they can try as many times as they’d like until they achieve mastery (which for me was around 70-80% depending on the course).



What I love about this passport system is that it motivates all types of students.  I told them that I would enter a test grade based on how far they get through the passport.  If they did it all on time, they get a 100% test grade. If they don’t get very far, they could get as low as a 50% test grade added in right at the end of the semester.  Those with high or low semester averages had a reason to complete the passport on time.

I know we’re too busy to be visiting each other’s classrooms in this final push, but I wish you could see the energy and focus of my students as they use these class periods so productively.  They have pride as they ask me to sign off on their achievements. They’re coming in during lunch, after school and yesterday my x block was hopping with students learning from their mistakes and trying to solidify their knowledge of Algebra 2 concepts.  I’ve never seen them work so hard!

I plan to give them a survey after the exam to see how they liked this process.  I also want to see how their exam grades are related to their progress on the passport.  I’ll follow up here with those results. For now, even though I’m exhausted and every period is super busy as I balance giving brief chapter reviews and check off each student one by one, I feel like I’m finally serving my students and giving them a really tangible way to do final exam studying which can otherwise be really daunting.  And hopefully, if this all worked the way it was supposed to, they’ll simply have to review their already gathered materials from the passport experience the night before their exam. They’ll come in feeling rested and ready. Stay tuned!

Why Use a Textbook Problem When You Can Create Your Own Problem Live in the Classroom?

Posted on by

I have a new prep this year, PreCalculus, which has been an absolute joy to teach.  Many days, however, I’m only a step ahead of my students in terms of planning (and reteaching myself) the material.  Yesterday, I was using my 1st period prep to prepare my 3rd period lesson (nothing like living on the edge!).  And I came to this problem in the book:

While I could have just presented and solved this textbook problem, I realized it would be much more fun to actually do this as a mini-experiment in class.  I walked into class with a beaker full of hot water and a thermometer sticking out.  I didn’t tell them what it was for but I told them that while I was teaching other content, every five minutes someone had to come up, check the temperature and record the time and temperature. 

When it came time to learn about Newton’s Law of Cooling, I showed them the formula and told them our task was to plot our data and use Newton’s formula to model the cooling represented by our data.  It was a total risk.  I had no idea if it would work (since I had no time to try this myself) but I believed it should work and went for it. 

Here is our work developing the equation.  We knew the starting temperature from the first read of our data (78 degrees celsius), used the thermostat on the wall to get the room temperature (with having to convert to celsius!) and were left with needing to figure out k, which is the rate of decay or cooling.  The textbook problem provided it in their problem, but we had a real live example and no one was providing us with the cooling rate.  What could we do?  The students expertly realized we could use and plug in one of our data points to solve for k.  We used (29, 46) [By the way, this just means the temperature was 49 degrees celsius 29 minutes after we started recorded] to solve for our missing parameter, k. 

Then came the moment of truth:  Did the equation fit our points?  We plugged it in and (drumroll….):

An awesome fit!  We talked about why some points were a little off from the general trend of the cooling (maybe someone read the thermometer wrong–it wasn’t digital, or maybe the heat went on or there was a breeze that caused the water to cool more quickly or slowly).  Such great rich conversation from our mini-experiment.  And, I hope that they’ll remember Newton’s Law of Cooling much more now having a tangible memory/experience with it, as opposed to just one of the many problems Mrs. Jain explained on the board.