your cat, you have to figure out an entirely new equation. “It sounds like every time you go to add something to. “But because the cat’s head isn’t where it should be, like in my drawing, none of the whiskers really make sense.” She looked up at me with big, saucer eyes. So I figured out the slope of the lines using slope triangles and, you now, rise over run.” Yes! There was so much from here! I had her show me how she determined the linear equations to use. “I had already drawn my cat on paper.” Catalina pointed again to her sketch. “Okay, and then how did you come up with the whiskers?” “I just replaced the h and the k and the a and the b with numbers.” She pointed to the paper with the assignment.

How did you come up with the equation for the ellipse?” I asked her. “Okay, let’s start slow and then go fast. “Okay, but I have a lot to do, and I don’t know how to do the mouth at all!” She pointed to the parabola of its tiny feline lips. For all of his asymmetries, this cat represented a lot of mathematical prowess. Its ears floated just North and East of its wide, oval face. She offered an apologetic smile.Ĭatalina had created a lopsided cat. Then she opened her chromebook slowly, turning it to face me. Reviewing Catalina’s WorkĬatalina pulled out her initial sketch that she had made on grid paper. We cheerfully arranged to meet later that day. “…that you could help me with my Desmos art project? It’s due soon and it’s really hard.” “Do you think…” she paused, and then started again with lowered voice. She had an impressively high growth score on last year’s state test. She now advocates for support when she’s feeling confused. I’ve known her for years, and I’m enormously proud of her mathematical journey. “Aww, I miss working with you, too!” I gushed.

Laib!!! I miss working with you!” Last year, she was in a section of 7th grade that I co-taught, and I saw her in a small group for part of the school year. Nora had been wrestling with her feelings around the transition from our little K-8 school to the town’s only high school, and so she was working on a nostalgic rendition of the PBS Kids logo, a fixture of her youth. Sebastian had designed a Puerto Rican flag to honor his heritage. Within a few days, graphs were shaping into true artwork. (Outline a set of points, and the Desmos graphing calculator will shade the interior!)

Then, after students had mucked about with inequalities for a few days, she introduced the polygon tool as an inefficient way to color in areas. The next day, she taught them how to create a custom color. She gave them formulas to help create unfamiliar figures, like circles and ellipses. and then breadcrumbed different techniques over the course of the week. The classroom teacher had given some loose constraints - use at least 8 linear equations, use at least 4 inequalities, use at least 4 horizontal lines, etc. It is a glorious capstone to their K-8 math experience at our school. In the last week of two of school, the 8th graders worked on Desmos art projects.

Desmos polar graph art project desmos