Jill Vettrus, a Mathematics Instructor at Southeast Technical College in South Dakota, uses Amplify Classroom activities as assignments to assess and activate prior knowledge, promote active learning, and provide formative practice and assessment. The Amplify Classroom platform was previously called Desmos Classroom, and provides a wide variety of free, prebuilt activities for math, science, and literacy that can be used as is or edited for course-specific needs. Vettrus has successfully used Amplify activities in all of her gateway mathematics courses from developmental math through college algebra and trigonometry.
Vettrus believes in the discovery of math and Amplify allows that to happen in an engaging way for students. For years she has used hands-on activities in face-to-face classes, and still enjoys those. Amplify allows for comparable and new activities which support learning and a more solid foundation of math concepts than lecture alone. Vettrus uses Amplify activities with in-person classes, and loves the activities for her online students. She has found that online students are much more likely to complete an Amplify activity than to watch content videos. While it would be great for students to view a lecture video and participate in an activity, Vettrus knows that having students engage in the math is the end goal so the Amplify path is a great option.
Digital Resources
Amplify Classroom, formerly Desmos
Amplify Classroom is a free online platform which offers lessons, classroom activities, Desmos scientific and graphing calculators, and virtual manipulatives (Polypad). Vettrus has used Amplify activities for a wide variety of topics and purposes. Here are some example activities by teaching practices:
Active Learning
- Development of Trigonometry Ratios (by Mark Roxas) – an investigation which leads students through discovering trig ratios.
Assessing and Activating Prior Knowledge
- Click Battle (by Desmos) – allows students to use their own proportional reasoning strategies for determining which Bot is fastest.
Formative Assessment and Practice
- Number Sentences: Sort Expressions (by Jill Vettrus) – allows students to match written expressions and variable expressions.
- Marbleslides: Lines (By Desmos) – allows students to test their understanding of slope-intercept form of linear equations.
Peer Collaboration
- Super Mario Quadratics (by John Rowe) – Vettrus assigns this to partners, allowing them to discuss how changing their equation will change the jumping path of Mario.
- Paint Ratios (by Jill Vettrus) – allows students to share their paint colors with others in the class, and their fellow classmates then determine the correct ratio to match the color.
Vettrus promotes metacognition by including a reflection activity within the LMS after using an Amplify activity in class. Students are asked to state a couple of things they learned through the activity, any questions they have after completing it and overall thoughts of the activity. Many students have expressed enjoying the activities and that engaging in this way has really helped them learn and understand new concepts.
Digital Enablement
Instructors are able to create a classroom for the students to join, assign activities to students, and monitor student progress. Amplify activities can be assigned to be completed independently or an instructor can assign and then guide students through by putting pauses after certain slides in order to pull students together and discuss their process in real time.
Here are some of the features/benefits of the activities in Amplify:
- Share with the class – allows students to interact with each other
- Self-correcting – allows immediate feedback for the student and ability to correct their work)
- Interactive – allows students to play around with the math (Desmos graphing calculator, balances, etc.)
- Workspace – allows students to show their work and thinking
- Visual – allows students to see the math an instructor might have a difficult time teaching without the use of Amplify. The technology shows the math Vettrus is teaching and really allows students to interact with it.
Doing activities that activate students’ prior knowledge, help jump start their learning and make connections to the current topic is a big first step in learning for all students. Amplify works well in both face-to-face as well as online classes. The immediate/self-correcting nature of many of the activities is ideal for all students, especially online when they don’t often have that real time feedback.
Vettrus advises that instructors make sure to work completely through any activity prior to assigning it. Each activity includes a Teacher Moves page that provides a rough outline of the activity and allows instructors to make notes.