My new main squeeze (mathematically speaking) - Desmos Activity Builder

Over the last couple of months, I have become more and more familiar with the brilliance of Desmos Activity Builder (found at the bottom left of this linked page).  My students have become quite familiar with activity builder as well.  For the last number of years, I have been deeply appreciative of the good product put out by Desmos.  The online calculator is intuitive and really helps students to grasp the conceptual in a way that allows mathematical procedures to have a firm grounding (supporting the effective mathematics teaching practice 6 as defined within NCTM's Principles to Actions).  The relatively new feature of the activity builder has taken it to an entirely different level.

While I have used it in my college classes to support the understanding of my students, it has also been enjoyable to see my methods students develop their own activity builder lessons.  My great successes within activity builder have centered around student discovery of transformations of functions.  Yesterday, my college algebra students engaged in this activity.  

https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/562e3e7f9236025b1c09a483

I had students work in groups, primarily pairs on this activity. I did this to allow my students to have discussions about their mathematical assertions.  Using collaborative groupings allows for students to have meaningful mathematical discourse as defined in effective mathematics teaching practice 4 within Principles to Actions.  

As students are engaged in the activity, I can monitor progress through the overview page on the teacher dashboard of activity builder.  I really appreciate this feature because I am able to monitor the ways that students are progressing through the activity.  I don't want speed to be a factor in my instruction, so if a group seems to be rushing through the activity, I know this right away.  I can check in with this group to monitor more closely their needed understanding of the concepts.  

Another of the wonderful aspects of activity builder is that I can check student work easily after the students have completed the activity in class.  At the end of this particular activity, I asked my students to find three different quadratic functions that would match to the curves on my "ugly mug" picture.  This was the creation of one group.

Desmos is also a fertile ground for students to work on appropriate vocabulary within particular contexts.  As I monitor their responses, I can step in and ask probing questions to add a certain level of mathematical specificity to their written assertions in Desmos.  

In short, activity builder has allowed me to create an environment where the sense making is placed firmly on the shoulders of my students.  They are actively engaged in the content as they explore the behavior of functions.  It is a great environment for students to take risks and revise thinking.  

Thank you, Desmos!