An AP Environmental Science FRQ for "The Martian"

Since I teach in New York, even though we're a private school, we have about three or four weeks of classes after the AP exam. We work on eco-columns during this time, but I don't need all of the class periods to work on this. We spend about half of the class time taking measurements from the eco-columns and then we've been watching The Martian during the second half of class. In the end, I think we'll take 4 days to finish the movie. I want this time in class to be low key, but not so low key that students completely check out. Instead of a long sheet of questions to fill out as students watch the movie, I decided to ask Gemini to make an FRQ using task verbs and topics from AP Environmental Science that corresponds to the Martian. This allows students more practice for FRQs since they still have a final exam to take for me, but is still not a huge assignment. 

I was happy with what Gemini gave me and appreciated the rubric that goes along with it. 

Here's a link to the Martian FRQ. The rubric comes right after the FRQ itself. 

Right Triangle Scavenger Hunt for Geometry

 

I use Math Medic for all of the math classes I teach and they made a scavenger hunt for AP Precalculus that I love. This year, I've returned to teaching Geometry and at least in the beginning unit, the Math Medic Geometry units didn't include review activities. I decided to try my hand at making scavenger hunts to review some of the Geometry units. The first two that I made, I used questions from Math Medics assessment platform, so I'm not free to share those resources. When the class got to right triangle trigonometry, I made another scavenger hunt, but this time used questions from past Geometry Regents exams. This hunt I can share, since past exam questions are publicly available. 

The premise of a scavenger hunt: Start at any lettered question that's taped around the classroom and write the letter down on paper or a whiteboard. Solve the question and the correct answer choice will lead you to the next question to find. Continue until you've answered all questions. If done correctly, the last question's answer will bring you back to the letter you began with. Most students won't begin with the first letter, but can figure out the secret word that the letters spell by the end. The word also makes it easy for me to check their answers no matter what letters they've been to because I know what order the letters should be in. 

Here's my Geometry Right Triangle Trig Scavenger Hunt.