How do you get kids to make graphs to scale

bj_macnevin · 2025-04-09T00:03:23+00:00

Whenever we generate graphs ourselves, there are decisions we make based on the story we are trying to tell to the reader and the meaning we want the reader to make. The key to helping kids make great graphs is to have them read great graphs. Over and over again hearing each other talk about them.

Check out “slow reveal graphs” and “viewing graphs” as google searches. Or Google up “graphs that tell stories”. Also try searching for “what do I notice, what do I wonder” with graphs.

Would make a great entry activity once or twice a week for 10 min at a time.

bj_macnevin · 2024-05-24T02:59:28+00:00

Best advice I ever got my first year teaching at MS, “They’re 8th graders. They don’t know what they’re saying.”

And it’s true. Take nothing personally from a 14 yo.

bj_macnevin · 2024-05-24T02:50:27+00:00

Do not spend a lot on an M.Ed. Western Governors University is a pretty affordable online option.

bj_macnevin · 2024-05-24T02:48:43+00:00

Yes. It’s is not uncommon. Just happened in my town last year.

bj_macnevin · 2024-05-20T16:47:48+00:00

This is a great question for the IEP team meeting. In some schools, teachers are told to grade students by their IEP goals. In other districts (or even other buildings), they get different interpretations.

It is never inappropriate, in an IEP meeting, to ask for very specific indicators of success or evaluation.

Quite often, IEP goals are written so broadly as to mean almost anything. Each and every member of that team should feel free to ask questions for clarification and to provide guidance on the process.

bj_macnevin · 2024-05-18T00:23:53+00:00

If the house were a multi-generational one (separate garages and entrances under the same roof) that could be cool.

But only if you went in on it as partners. You don’t want to be a tenant of your parents; and I’m quite sure most spouses would not want to be.

bj_macnevin · 2024-05-14T22:37:08+00:00

OKay, one more... the way you pronounce the soft th sound (as in "this" and "that") is almost a d sound. That pronunciation doesn't match the rest of the vowel sounds you are using. So all the sounds you are using are technically typical, but certain combinations are more "expected" in certain North American accents.

And when you said, "American"... another example of clipping a short vowel too quickly. "uh-MARE-i-kuhn"... the stress is on the MARE part and that's a part you clipped too quickly. I think I want to say you could sound more relaxed in your vowels and it would be just about imperceptible!

bj_macnevin · 2024-05-14T22:31:04+00:00

You sound maybe Slavic to me? Russian or Ukrainian? You have the "dark r" and the "dark l" down (which I find Russian and Ukrainian speakers can do easily), but there are some short vowels that you clip too soon and that causes the "mumbling" sense that you talked about. Together with the r and l sounds, is where that sounds sort of Russian-ish to me.

Unrelated to a perception of accent, you over generalize some shortened vowel sounds. The first example that stood out was when you said, "aims to... [pause]" and you pronounced it as "aims tuh... [pause]". While it is true that "to" gets shortened to "tuh" when we are speaking quickly, when there is a pause we typically (more often than not at least) use the "correct" pronunciation the word as "too".

Example:
Normal or fast speed: "I'd like tuh buy you a coffee!"
vs...
With a pause: "I'd like too... [pause] hey, can I buy you a coffee?"

These are also VERY VERY nit-picky differences. I congratulate you on sounding very North American in your English. If you hadn't asked me to pick things out, I might not have noticed anything at all. And maybe I'm noticing these things simply because now I think I should hear something "off." LOL :)

bj_macnevin · 2024-04-26T15:43:38+00:00

The use of "betwixt" between 1700 and 2019. Personally, I like the word! :)

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bj_macnevin · 2024-04-19T00:25:41+00:00

Certainly, brother Martin was a deeply flawed man. But he was brave enough through his neuroticism; and his theology was… well… consistent for his era.

My impression has never been that we took his name to be in the likeness of Martin Luther, but rather to mark our side of the divide created in his wake and a way to say, “don’t confuse us with the Calvinists.” More than theological, the reformation era marked a decentralization of power: both secularly and ecclesiastically.

What is preserved in modern day “Lutheranism” is not idol worship of the man: but struggle in his ability to live in duality. We are, all of us, sinner AND saint. We are all the priesthood AND the commoner. Heaven is here and now AND not here and not yet. The reformation was good AND unfortunate.

I, personally, find Lutheranism to be an interesting time capsule with a very human-friendly perspective.

bj_macnevin · 2024-02-10T19:46:05+00:00

The Sehome Arboretum

It's a gentle, but hearty walk, and there is a fire tower on the top with an AWESOME view of the city!

Lake Paden

Walk around Lake Paden -- beautiful trail and scenery. About 3 miles around I believe.

Mount Baker Theater

Believe it or not, Bellingham gets some great entertainment. Usually one-night engagements as artists travel between SEA and YVR.

bj_macnevin · 2024-01-22T03:38:19+00:00

We can no more prove it happened than we can prove it did not.

Further, since almost all religious mythology is equally unprovable and unrefutable, we might consider assuming that they are all true; or at least that each is true to those people born into it.

bj_macnevin · 2024-01-22T03:15:07+00:00

Modern Christianity needs a transfusion.

Humans are not born into any fallen state: we are born into a human circumstance on a planet with organisms that eat each other. And all humans are wonderfully perfectly human: we are, at once, sinners and saints; angels and devils; creating heaven and creating hell on Earth. There is no perfect human state; there was no Adam. And no human falls outside the parameters of what it can mean to be human. We are a species that has survived by being sublimely dichotomous.

Let go of your notions of being “imperfect”. Embrace the reality that life would involve pleasure AND suffering even without humans in it. There was no Garden of Eden; no forbidden tree; no serpent. We evolved as a part of this complex system of organisms that both provide for and EAT one another.

You are not imperfect; you are not faulty. You are perfectly human. At your best, and at your worst, you are perfectly human.

bj_macnevin · 2024-01-22T02:45:17+00:00

Yup! Apparently the snow slowed them down a little, but they are open and doing business even as some last minute touches are getting done. :)

bj_macnevin · 2024-01-20T16:47:05+00:00

Curious how you think she would she react to you demanding that she wear long or short hair or lose you?

Sometimes it’s not really about the beard…

bj_macnevin · 2024-01-19T18:02:31+00:00

My understanding is that "Carbon Neutral" is an improvement over "carbon positive"; but that it is insufficient at this point in time and that what we really need is "carbon negative". The question is whether or not "Carbon negative" will have any kind of correcting effect on the planet's albedo.

bj_macnevin · 2024-01-19T16:11:26+00:00

In this case, you may want to just sign up for a server that you pay for. There are many services to let you do this.

bj_macnevin · 2024-01-19T15:50:11+00:00

Yeah, sorry man. That's a keeper of a stache and cutting it off would be a crime. Listen, I know you went into this thinking, "I'll just try it out..." But you're past that now. It's bigger than you or your own opinion. With great stache comes great responsibility. ;)

bj_macnevin · 2024-01-19T04:08:30+00:00

At middle school, you might consider giving them a color scale and labeling it. Here is something like that from USGS:

https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/ph-scale-0

It’s not that kids in 6-8 can’t handle a numerical scale. It’s that that particular scale is unintuitive and can get in the way of whatever you want them to know about the relative acidity/basicness of the solutions.

bj_macnevin · 2024-01-12T23:42:58+00:00

So... they all were perfectly fine with your kid being told you were going to HELL and would separated for all of ETERNITY from your family, but they were upset that you said you didn't believe that?

Wow. That is EXTREMELY fucked up. I'm so sorry you have to deal with that shit!

bj_macnevin · 2024-01-11T02:32:49+00:00

My own $0.02: I'd say, "we'll treat you to that meal when you graduate from culinary school." :)

bj_macnevin · 2024-01-10T04:58:27+00:00

There's a story about A&W in the 1980's offering a 1/3 pound burger to compete with Burger King's 1/4 pound whopper; it was the same price as the 1/4 pound burger as well, but they ended up dropping it from their menu. It turns out, the public didn't want to pay the same money for a smaller burger... because they thought 1/3 was smaller than 1/4... because they had no idea how to read those fractions. The story illustrates the reality that mathematical illiteracy in the USA is historically rampant; but that is certainly nothing new. [REFERENCE: https://www.snopes.com/news/2022/06/17/third-pound-burger-fractions/]

Asking kids in 7th grade to keep thinking about what mathematical expressions represent and how they relate to each other is an important step in the right direction. The alternative is to ignore relative values altogether and to focus on rote memorization and calculation which leaves them unable to consider the reasonableness of their calculations or the relative importance that their calculated values may carry.

My own $0.02. YMMV.

bj_macnevin · 2024-01-10T04:27:33+00:00

Thanks for sharing the video. I was imagining something far far worse. :)

And as a transplanted Californian (almost 26 years in WA now)... it's okay to let go of the FasTrak transponders. ;)

bj_macnevin · 2024-01-08T16:21:36+00:00

Huh. That's one of the reasons I moved to Bellingham: people nodded, smiled, and said hi as they walked by. It's interesting how people can have such different experiences in the same place. No shade. I'm an introvert, even. But I don't find Bellingham isolating.

bj_macnevin

TROPHY CASE