MathyCathy's Blog – Mrs. Cathy Yenca

One of my goals for the 25-26 school year is to incorporate structured movement and peer dialogue into at least one math lesson per unit by implementing the Stand and Talk and Four Corners strategies. These activities will provide opportunities for students to physically engage with math concepts, verbalize their reasoning, and consider multiple perspectives, supporting conceptual understanding and classroom community.

If you use any of the Amplify {Desmos!} Classroom activities organized into collections by unit shared in the sidebar here, you may notice I’m intentionally adding Stand & Talks screens as we progress through the curriculum this year. It’s amazing how effective such a simple-to-implement strategy can be to encourage students to talk math! I’m having fun gleaning these activities for opportunities to add a new visual prompt for students to talk about. As always, credit to Sara VanDerWerf! Though I adore this strategy and will stick to my goal commitment this year, middle schoolers can sometimes be resistant to talking to another peer one-on-one, even for a short time, especially as I’m asking them to partner up with someone new every time. #AWKWARD

Which is why I’m also using a low-stakes formative assessment strategy regularly to my repertoire – my version of a “4-Corners” strategy! 

Using 4 different sets of similar problems, students FIRST work individually on their own brief set of problems. Students may not realize that there are 4 different versions of the problems floating around the classroom just yet! Then, after a few minutes of independent work, I send students to each of the 4 corners of the classroom (or 4 specific areas I’d like them to meet) according to the emoji pictured in the top corner of each warm-up sheet. These randomly-grouped students compare and discuss solutions with one another, making corrections as needed. I check in with each group, and we come back together as a class to discuss solution strategies and questions. Meeting with a random small group seems more to students’ liking than being asked to talk to a peer one-on-one.

I love that this sort of activity promotes both MOVEMENT and STUDENT DISCOURSE.  It’s a variation on “YOU DO… Y’ALL DO… I-DO-or-intervene-as-needed”. 

4-Corners can be a pre-assessment… a warm-up… a review… a lesson closure activity… a great way to start a Monday morning to see if Friday’s math is still in their brains… literally ANY TIME.

For an even more detailed run-through of the various ways I use the “4-Corners” resources I create, read this super-thorough blog post, which also includes a FREE “4-Corners” activity addressing circumference. (⬆️ pictured above ⬆️ )

Also, check out a few more of these linked below. Every time I use one, I see and hear students’ work and dialogue and I think, “I should do this more often!” 

Well, by creating all of these, I’m committing to that! ❤️ Join me!

4-Corners: Order of Operations / Simplify Expressions

4-Corners: Classify, Compare / Order & Represent Real Numbers

4-Corners: Scientific Notation & Standard Decimal Notation

4-Corners: Solving 1-Step Equations & Inequalities

4-Corners: Solving 1-Step Equations & Inequalities With NEGATIVES

4-Corners: Solving Multi-Step Equations

4-Corners: Slope From a Table and Graph

4-Corners: Write a Slope-Intercept Form Linear Equation Given Two Points

4-Corners: Linear Proportional & Non-Proportional Relationships

4-Corners: Identify Functions

4-Corners: Angle Sum & Exterior Angles of Triangles

4-Corners: Pythagorean Theorem and its Converse

4-Corners: Volume of a Cylinder

4-Corners: Surface Area of Similar Solids

4-Corners: Transformations Using Coordinates

4-Corners: Statistics: Measures of Center & Spread

4-Corners Financial Literacy: Simple and Compound Interest

4-Corners: Add & Subtract Fractions and Mixed Numbers

I just wrapped up week 4 of the 2025-26 school year, and year 24 for me is off to a strong start. I’m pretty sure I say this every year, but I truly love my students—and it feels like this could be the best year yet!

This week, I was so honored to be featured in Amplify’s newsletter! Seeing an activity Steph Reilly and I worked on together YEARS ago is still generating so much engagement was both affirming and surprising. In fact, it made Amplify’s curated list of the Most-Taught Community-Authored Lessons, EACH of which was joined by over 20,000 students in the past school year!

So yes, the transition from Desmos Classroom to Amplify Classroom has been a bumpy one. Even with all of their responsiveness through DMs and their Facebook page, I’m still running into tiny glitches here and there. In the spirit of sending a few 🧡orange hearts their way (instead of tomatoes), after 4 weeks with my new student crew, I’m not sure what I would do WITHOUT this platform.

The way I’m able to craft a journey for my students, and tweak it every single year, thanks to its features and capabilities… it’s STILL my go-to for differentiation, real-time inquiry, instructional pacing, error analysis, and formative assessment. It’s the place where I can create and do 98% of the things I WANT to create and do, giving my students rich experiences nearly every day of the school year. And the fact that I can improve my own work by remixing it with the work of others with a simple command-c, command-v… I mean, who else does that?! And at no cost…?!

My understanding is that all of the goodies we’ve created and shared on this platform over the past decade will be Google-able again soon. In the meantime, you can check out my own curated units in the sidebar here. ➡️➡️➡️ And in the spirit of sharing some potentially just-in-time first-quarter faves (the ones where I wake up that morning so excited to see how students will respond and what kind of discourse will unfold) check these out:

• Zero and Negative Exponent Patterns

• Real Number Sort: ALWAYS, SOMETIMES, NEVER

• Squares and Square Roots

• Open Middle: Rational and Irrational Numbers

• Slopes, Triangles, Graphs

• Slopes, Tables, Points

• Slope-Intercept Form Intro With Marbleslides! 🟣 ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

Do you have some favorite activities that get you out of bed on a Monday morning with a little extra pep in your step? Share them in the comments – I’d love to hear!

And here’s a little blessing to send you off: May your 🧡Amplify experiences be smooth, your Google searches fruitful, and your school year the best yet. Here’s to lesson plans that land, tech that actually works, and Monday mornings that feel like Friday afternoons – you’ve got this!

It’s the Saturday morning after the first 3 days of the 25-26 school year. I’m sipping coffee, reflecting on the week, and recovering from that classic first-days-of-school sore throat we all get… riiiight? It’s my 🎶golden hour (love that song) – the house is quiet, the relentless tick of the lesson-plan clock is paused until Monday, and I can finally think and breathe a little.

I woke up today with a burden to help anyone stopping through here who is an at-no-cost user of Desmos Activity Builder… er… Desmos Classroom… um… Amplify Classroom! I had a HECK of a second day of school and I want to proactively share what I’ve learned so your sailing is smoother… not necessarily smooth, but smoothER.

First of all, I am SO GRATEFUL that the changes that have been happening over the course of the last several years with Desmos Classroom / Amplify Classroom have not impacted our access to the free resources we’ve been creating and sharing and REFINING for a literal DECADE. We’ve come to rely on these teacher-created resources to enhance student learning, designing math journeys that only years of classroom experience can inspire. Those in the trenches creating and sharing resources? POWERFUL.

H O W E V E R…. I’m looking out for YOU, teacher-whose-school-year-has-NOT-yet-begun, to ensure your students can access their new Amplify class and subsequent activities in 25-26. Here’s what I learned this week (and for real-time stories and advice, you should also head on over to Facebook and join the group Amplify Classroom Educators (formerly Desmos Educators).

Before my students arrived, I created classes in Amplify and simply placed each Amplify class link (with the join code as a part of the link) in Google Classroom, assuming students would just click it, login with their district-provided Google account, and life would be peaceful and happy. NOPE! The trick was to go to the BOTTOM of the list of log-in options (ie. Log in with Google, Log in with Amplify, and so on) and keep selecting 👍🏻SIGN UP rather than ❌LOG IN. This establishes their new Amplify account. EVENTUALLY they did log in with their district Google account. It was cyclical and redundant and slow and not intuitive and ultimately… successful! 

I learned all of this the hard way! Thankfully I heard back from the folks at Amplify SWIFTLY with the advice below after a troubleshooting day that was a bit of a *ahem* show… not a great look on the second day of school. I hope this helps you! 

On my students’ iPads, some STILL had issues after doing everything here. I had them close EVERY browser tab (some had a TON of tabs open, including open tabs to failed attempts to get into Amplify, which I believe muddied the process even more) and close every app they had running, AND do a hard restart, and start AGAIN. Do you feel the class time slipping away…? Yup. That was us! After closing everything and restarting, some students FINALLY had success.

ALSO, I had a HECK of a time trying to locate a list of Amplify Activities I had assigned to each class (that used to be so easy to access, but I digress…). Here’s how you find it now:

• Log in to Amplify and select HOME (upper left)

• You’ll see “Recently Visited” at the top and “Stream” just underneath. On the right side of the screen, select “See All”.

• VOILA! You can use the drop-down on the left side to sort by class!

❤️ To end on a positive note, on day 3 of school, my 8th period (last class of the day) who was working together on an Amplify / Desmos activity audibly moaned when I told them it was almost time to pack up and go… they actually wanted to STAY and KEEP DOING MATH.

On a FRIDAY.

I hope this honeymoon phase lasts through May 2026!

Pinch me! #iteachmath

👋 Howdy! Long time no blog, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been trucking along, loving the teaching and traveling life. Post-Covid, I feel like I’ve learned how to maintain a little more balance in my life, establishing healthier work/life boundaries. Sometimes that means I have the *BEST* of intentions to share here, and then… I never do… which is a shame because I do think about this dusty ol’ blog often (you should see my unpublished drafts…!) These days, I’m the mom of a college student, I have more gray hair than ever, and I’m about to celebrate 25 years married to my love…! During the work weeks, we work hard… and when we’re not working, we play hard. For us that usually means a trip to Orlando to eat, play, and even cruise. The middle-aged life is good!

The reason I’m passing through here today is to prepare a quick PD to reference when I return to work on August 1. AUGUST 1. UM, THAT’S EARLY…! I’ve been asked to share about a few ThatQuiz updates at our first math department meeting, so… why not share that info here too? Plus, it’ll be really easy for me to find in August! 😂

ThatQuiz is a free and fabulous tool for assessing students. I’ve been gushing over this simple green-gray UI for over a decade, but if you need a refresher or introduction to this unassuming, self-grading tool that quietly keeps getting better and better, check out this and this and maybe even this first. Or, go straight to the source here.

Early in the 23-24 school year, ThatQuiz added a new featured called “Observe“. While students are quizzing, the teacher (logged into one’s own ThatQuiz teacher account) can select Observe and see a thumbnail of each student’s screen in real time – amazing!

ThatQuiz has included something valuable under the “Observe” area! I thought this feature was only useful while students were actually quizzing live and in front of me, but there’s SO MUCH MORE here! There’s a history hiding under that counter-clockwise clock icon! When the teacher selects the clock, each student’s observation / screen has its own history icon… and the teacher can literally scroll through every screen of every assessment that student has done within the most recent 30-day range…!!! Every keystroke, timestamped and able to be seen for 30 days! This can be especially helpful if you set a threshold for students on assessments. For example, there are some ThatQuizzes that I set at 80%, so students who earn less than 80% are prompted to retest. I *thought* the data for previous attempts was lost and inaccessible, but under OBSERVE they can be seen for 30 days!

Do you hear me cheering over here?!? YAHOO!!!

A second improvement I’m THRILLED to share is in the Slides area. I could write about ways to use Slides for hours (check out those aforementioned hyperlinked posts to see more love for Slides) but in this post, I’m focusing on a new feature – ALTERNATE CORRECT ANSWERS!!! In the past, teachers have only been able to create open-response questions with ONE correct answer noted in the self-grading “key” we establish. Now, Slides provides space for teachers to add up to 4 alternate correct answers… which is super-handy for a self-grading tool in a math class where equivalence should be celebrated. Below is my attempt to show y’all how to create a basic slide with some text on it, as well as a field for students to type an answer. Now we can include UP TO 4 ALTERNATE CORRECT ANSWERS TOO!!! ❤️

Finally, the kind ThatQuiz folks have updated the way teachers can schedule assessments. In the past, we could only begin and end an assessment using increments of 5 minutes. Now, we have the ability to align assessments with our unique bell schedules. Watch this quick video to see how to begin and end an assessment at exact minutes.

I am infinitely grateful to the folks at ThatQuiz who are ALWAYS open to UI suggestions and ALWAYS ask for ways to improve and ALWAYS implement any suggested improvements that help teachers and students! They are the best!!!

What’s your favorite free, self-grading math assessment tool, and why is it ThatQuiz? 😉

Greetings! Though blogging as a means to reflect and share seems to have died, I like to pass through these parts every now and again and share something potentially useful and timely! Perhaps you’ve already met your new crew of 22-23 students – if so, I hope your year is off to a fabulous start! Here in Texas, I’ll get to meet my new students this week, and I can’t wait! 😃

No Texas math teacher wants to think about our state test (🌟STAAR🌟) now… in August… but we must! This year, students will experience a plethora of new item types, and there’s no time like the present to plan for this, especially when there’s already a free assessment tool that can help!

ThatQuiz.org isn’t new. It’s lacking in bells and whistles, but it sure does a lot of amazing things! I’ve been a ThatQuiz user for 10+ years and I’m still stumbling upon features that I never knew existed! I’ve come a long way, and feel confident that I can create assessment questions that look very much like what our students will see on this year’s STAAR for the first time. Thanks to ThatQuiz.org, my students will experience these item types all year, and by the time STAAR arrives, they’ll be ready! I appreciate that there’s a new level of rigor coming to STAAR!

I’d love to share my ThatQuiz learning curve with you through a few resources I’ve created. Firstly, if you’ve never heard of ThatQuiz, here’s a 10-minute intro video that will get you started.

If you’re most interested in learning how to create a few assessment questions that function like the new 22-23 math STAAR questions, here are some brief ThatQuiz video tutorials.

Drag and Drop Using ThatQuiz

Create a Text Entry Question Using ThatQuiz

Create Graphing Assessment Questions Using ThatQuiz

Finally, if you’re dedicated to a ThatQuiz LONG HAUL, I created a sort of self-paced “course” using Desmos Activity Builder. This is not designed to be a sit-down-for-an-hour-and-learn-all-the-things experience. This Activity/Course is more of a guide to explore at your own comfortable pace, and consider a reference when you need a refresher. Shoot, I even come back to it and reread my own tutorials to remember some of this stuff! It’s a LOT, so don’t get overwhelmed, friends! Take your time, do a little here and there, and try some things out with your students in bite-sized chunks.

Would love to hear about your journey using ThatQuiz with students!

🎉Happy New Year, Teachers! Have a fabulous 22-23!

It’s been (at least) 7 years in the making!

Next month, when students across Texas take an online state STAAR test, they will also {for the first time ever} see an *embedded* Desmos graphing calculator option in addition to a TI emulator. A “both-and” graphing calculator situation! Woot! Years back, we clunked our way through locking students into the original Desmos Test Mode app on iPads, but that only worked because students took paper tests. As state testing shifts to an online platform, having Desmos embedded was the hope, and here we are! I hope Desmos is also on your state test.

I wanted to stop through the ol’ blog to share several resources that might be helpful before STAAR (or may at least give you ideas to modify if you’re not specifically in Texas).

“Griddables”

To help students feel comfortable with “griddable” questions (that will now be more type-able than griddable using an online testing platform) I created this Desmos activity. During my time proctoring STAAR, I have never seen directions mentioned that remind students how to correctly grid their answers to open-response problems. Even leading up to STAAR, one has to Google in order to find these directions, and having students understand the flexible syntax before panic strikes mid-test is necessary. This activity provides directions and practice for students in Math 6, Math 7, Math 8, or Algebra 1. (Note: If I am missing an updated set of directions, please let me know! The directions for griddables I found online are the ones I included here.)

STAAR Chart Scavenger Hunts

Students take comfort in knowing they have access to a reference sheet during testing! Here are two activities designed to help students get reacquainted with EVERYTHING that’s on the “STAAR Chart”. It’s important to know which concepts are *NOT* on the reference sheet as well, and I’ve included a few ideas in the activities below. Math 8 and Algebra 1 are represented here, and if anyone decides to create or modify these for Math 6 or Math 7, please share back! ♥️

Additionally, the test review template Desmos activity shared here can be modified to include released STAAR questions for practice and student presentations. If you’ve never used it, I’d also like to introduce you to Problem-Attic as a question-bank resource. Having a free Problem-Attic account provides access to many released test problems that are sorted by topic. However, there’s a way to gain access to released STAAR questions too! Our curriculum and instruction department at the district level had to communicate with the fine folks at Problem-Attic for access to released STAAR questions aligned to TEKS through the Problem-Attic platform. Have your admin get in touch with Problem-Attic too! One can organize released questions to create resources in all sorts of ways (2-column PDF, a page with 4 problems in blocks, warm-ups), and the plaform allows one to change fonts, spacing, and more! Free access! Check it out!

Psssst… it’s me… you know… the math teacher that writes a post, say… twice a year anymore?

And IT HAS BEEN A YEAR. Grateful to be on THIS SIDE of it with you! *WHEW*

In my last two not-so-recent posts, I shared about the workflow I’d settled into, as well as when/how I used a few tools I adore. I plan to keep building on those ideas in THIS post.

Recently, I attended a PD day here in ATX with fellow math teachers, and we got a glimpse of the (potential) new question types heading our students’ way in Spring 2023 for our (state) STAAR tests. I realize many states have had much more interactive state assessments than we’ve had here in Texas… come 2023, we’ll finally catch up past the traditional multiple-choice and “griddable” response questions we’ve had as long as I’ve been a Texas teacher. While state testing isn’t everything, assessment FOR learning and using tech tools to help us assess FOR learning are kind of a big deal. So, seeing these new (potential) question types excited all of us, actually! If you would have been a fly on the wall, you’d have heard a room full of math teachers ooooooing and aaahhhhing at the interactive and much more open STAAR tasks! You’d also have heard me immediately advocating for tools like Desmos Activity Builder and ThatQuiz that (1) we already have access to, (2) are FREE, and (3) are ideal for building interactive assessment FOR learning experiences for kids.

A colleague asked me, “Can you train us?”

I said, “How long ya got…?” 🙂

This immediately put me in maker-mode… well not IMMEDIATELY. I waited until I got home to start building… this! Here’s my summertime attempt to feed two birds with one scone. I’ll share this with colleagues at back-to-school time, and I’ll toss it here for the time being for anyone who dabbles in schoolwork all summer, like yours truly.

WHAT IS IT, YENCA?

This is a Desmos Activity that guides y’all through all of the things I’ve learned about ThatQuiz.org prior to this year, but especially this year. I thought I knew this tool… but I’ve learned that its capabilities were FAR BEYOND my use cases! No, ThatQuiz isn’t new or shiny, but it’s quite frankly the answer to what I believe many teachers are looking for! I have learned SO MUCH about using ThatQuiz as a creation platform during SY 2020-2021, that when I thought about writing a blog post about it all, I was immediately overwhelmed. A Desmos AB with screens and media seemed a better fit. So… here ya go! This isn’t designed to be a once-and-done experience. May this resource serve as a helpful guide to return to again and again as needed!

^^^Click the image^^^ to try the activity as a student.

As a reward for your perseverance, you’ll also gain access to the teacher.desmos.com link, in case that’s useful for you.

Could ThatQuiz.org be the solution you didn’t know you needed?

As always… feedback welcome!

In my last post, I shared briefly about workflow and tools during our continued COVID-teaching time. This. Is. Hard. Teachers across our nation and globe are finding themselves teaching under varieties of circumstances with challenges that test our every limit. When it comes to using technology to help students learn mathematics, tool CHOICE has always mattered… and the WAY those tools are USED has also always mattered. But we find ourselves in unconventional, long-haul circumstances where teacher-SURVIVAL (literally during a pandemic, and with respect to our practice) can matter as much or more than making best-case-scenario pedagogical choices. We’re doing our best, where we are, with what we have, with the deck we’ve each been dealt, given the same 24-hours each day. (I happen to be “in-person” teaching students in-the-Zoom and in-the-room simultaneously, masked behind plexiglass barriers. It’s still surreal, even though I’ve been in this modality for 4 months now.)

I just finished listening to a recent episode of Justin Reich’s TeachLab Podcast featuring Dan Meyer in the Failure to Disrupt Book Club series. A question posed by regular guest Audrey Watters had me leaning in to my laptop with raised eyebrows (at the 36:19 mark):

“… Dan can you talk a little bit about… the kinds of things… features… that you would say no to? …What is something… teachers want that you’re like, nah, we ain’t gonna do that…?”

SPOILER: The “very big” feature request from teachers in recent months involves the desire for more auto-grading.

Dan goes on to say,“…By design, we (Desmos) have not exposed to students whether they are RIGHT or WRONG… That’s been intentional.”

Listen in (38:00 minutes) as Dan elaborates on the WHY. His responses resonated with me. For me, hands-down, Desmos has been the absolute best tool to help further mathematics education with our students’ “creativity and connection to other students” in general, but ESPECIALLY during this pandemic. Desmos Activity Builder provides a platform for students to experience mathematics in dynamic and even playful ways that simply cannot happen without technology. Desmos can help encourage student discourse that aids in building a community of learners who see math, not as static, but as something we can explore, test, attempt to break, and more deeply understand together.

That being said, I have never “graded” a Desmos activity.*

Perhaps being dealt the deck of teaching synchronously in-the-Zoom and in-the-room shapes my lens here. I have students who show up, log in to Desmos, and participate every day. Since we share the same time and space, whether in-person or virtually, I use Desmos activities to drive our live lessons. For us, Desmos is an experience, not a summative assessment. If students were to join a Desmos activity, and ask that age-old question, “Is this GRADED?” it would break my heart a little. They never ask me this because it’s not something we’ve ever done. Yes, we teachers are expected to put grades in our grading software programs. This is a deeply-ingrained part of “school”. For me, Desmos is just not the best tool for that. A fork is not a spoon.

I have the UTMOST RESPECT for the droves of teachers who are teaching themselves and others Desmos CL (computation layer coding language) in order to make Desmos Activity Builder “grade” student thinking. And I am a firm believer that many of the tech tools we have at our access can be used in unconventional yet effective ways, so using Desmos for grades isn’t right or wrong, it’s a use-case choice. I have seen some AMAZING Desmos assessments out there that use the platform to ask students deep questions, while taking advantage of providing students with access to so many of Desmos’ strongest features! KUDOS TO YOU! For those looking to assess understanding quickly, not necessarily using the strengths of Desmos along the way, I’m thinking about you right now… those trying to use Desmos activities for “learning checks” that are graded for you. When a tool has to be undone like a knotted pretzel and forced to do a thing that should be easy to do, maybe it’s not the best tool for that thing we are trying to make it do. A fork is not a spoon.

I’m not here to judge anyone’s tool choices or uses, *ESPECIALLY DURING A GLOBAL PANDEMIC* but I would like to propose another option for graded assignments. I’m looking for solutions to our many teaching challenges too, and here’s one that has helped me to assess AFTER our rich, shared Desmos experiences. It’s not pedagogically perfect, is certainly NOT new, but I think it might be an option to consider for folks who simply need a tool that provides students with opportunities to practice, demonstrate understandings, and quite frankly, “grade” stuff efficiently.

Check out my tag cloud to the right, and you’ll see “ThatQuiz” listed. This pandemic has propelled me to learn and understand ThatQuiz’s capabilities more than ever before. ThatQuiz does some automated things (generates skill quizzes based on constraints, for example), but it’s also a creation platform. You can make of it what you’d like. It auto-grades. I like using it to check understanding. With password-protected student logins, class data is collected over time in a user-friendly way. The teacher can even set a threshold (for example, students must earn 80% or will be prompted to redo) which propels students to seek help too. ThatQuiz has always been free, and promises to remain free forever, and to exist forever, so it’s worth a look if you’re new to it. Is ThatQuiz the utensil you might be looking for? Check out this brief video, go explore, and keep being your awesome teacher self. Then, check out this brief but thorough tutorial from ThatQuiz.

*The only Desmos Activities I have “graded” were longer-term projects that use the Activity Builder as a platform. 🙂