I absolutely love this guy, Dan Meyer, and his push to develop “patient problem solvers.” He suggests that math teachers should:
1. Use Multimedia.
2. Encourage student intuition.
3. Ask the shortest question you can.
4. Let students build the problem.
5. Be less helpful.
Here’s his TED Talk. Love it!
Take a look at his blog too! http://blog.mrmeyer.com/
Students in Mrs. Sharp’s 5th Grade class created creatures using their geometry skills to populate “The Geo-zoo.” Mrs. Sharp had done the activity years before using paper and shapes, but wanted to engage her students by using the iPads. We quickly were able to transfer the activity to a digital one.
Last Year’s Paper Version
Digital Version
Thanks to the iPad apps Geoboard, Pic Collage, and Dropbox, students were able to complete a project based activity (that normally was done as a homework project) within one class period. By the end of class time, Mrs. Sharp had a great understanding of her students’ strengths with Math SOL 5.13 (The student, using plane figures (square, rectangle, triangle, parallelogram, rhombus, and trapezoid), will develop definitions of these plane figures; and investigate and describe the results of combining and subdividing plane figures.)
Check out the process below:
The best part was that the students were completely engaged and absolutely loved their creations! Many even posted them on their blogs :
Rock Star Laser Robot by Double O Cleo
The Triangle Vampire from by Minecraft02
Tari the Tri-con by I Love Lax
Here are few examples of their awesome work:
If you are interested in doing a similar activity with your class, here is our STEM (Children’s Engineering) design brief and a couple versions of rubrics.
Let me know how it goes! And…if you are at one of my schools, I’d love to come in to help! Ask me! :)
Have you heard of Flocabulary? It’s a website that does hip hop songs to help students remember certain facts. It started with SAT vocab, but has expanded to all levels and subjects. To have access to all the videos/songs you need to pay a fee, but a few are free…including the one for Egypt, which you can watch here.
Note the lyrics below the song (they are clickable) and the resources to go with it on the right hand side of the page. I will warn you…you will be singing the chorus to this in your head all day after you hear it, or at least I did! :)
There are other free videos too worth checking out on the site, including Confessions of a Planet (Space), On Trial! (Test Taking Vocabulary), Let Freedom Ring (Civil Rights), This Ain’t Working (American Revolution), Place Value, Scientific Method of Madness, and more! There is a vocabulary section broken down by grade level and tons of other great videos in the paid version. You can also download songs in iTunes (for $.99 each). Take a look (and listen). I think you will love these!
Mrs. Devlin’s class has been at it again…this time explaining subtraction with regrouping using Voicethread! Check out their awesome projects (and leave them a comment or two)!
A few weeks ago, students at Oak Grove and Clearbrook went Oreo crazy! They brought in packages of the yummy cookies and tried to stack the tallest towers. But it wasn’t just for fun…it was part of a global project with students all over the world participating! You can learn more about the Oreo Project on Jen Wagner’s website. This was the 12th year of the project, and this time 15,501 students participated from 719 different classes.
After stacking oreos, different grade levels participated in different activities with the oreos, from science to math to writing. Many classes created Excel Spreadsheets showing the average cookie stack, or the mode, median, mean, and range of the stacks. They even used excel formulas for their calculations!
A few examples of their spreadsheets are shown below!
Mrs. Beir’s Class (Clearbrook — 3rd Grade)
Mrs. Hushour’s Class (Clearbrook — 3rd Grade)
Mrs. Bralley’s Class (Oak Grove — 3rd Grade)
Mrs. Sharp’s Block 1 Class (Oak Grove — 5th Grade)
Mrs. Sharp’s Block 2 Class (Oak Grove — 5th Grade)
Mrs. Mortez’s Block 1 Class (Oak Grove –5th Grade)
Mrs. Mortez’s Block 2 Class (Oak Grove — 5th Grade)
Mrs. Grave’s Class (Clearbrook — 5th Grade)
Mrs. Hudson’s Class (Clearbrook — 5th Grade)
I found this great math site by Glencoe on a blog I recently started following, InTech InSights by Karen Ogen. I am always looking for ways to practice the online tools that are similar to those used in testing, and this site has both a ruler (which doesn’t have the zero line at the end) and a protractor. Not only is is great for testing, there are tons of other manipulatives, workmats, storyboards, and game mats available (Base Ten blocks and boards, balance activities, calendars, grids, clocks, money, shapes, spinners, thermometers, counters, fraction pieces, and a bunch of other items). The site is great for PK-8th grade, and will work well on the ActivBoard! Check it out!
Students at Oak Grove Elementary participated in World Maths Day on March 3, an event in which students all across the world work to answer mental math as quickly as possible. Students had the opportunity to practice and then compete with students from many different countries, and collectively answered 21,211 math problems correctly on the day of the event. Unfortunately, the site did get very full and slow on the actual event day. However, ahead of time, students practiced and answered 38,958 problems correctly! Way to go Oak Grove!!
In the event this year, 1,133,246 students and 56,082 schools from 235 countries united to set a new world record by correctly answering 479,732,613 questions. That’s a lot of math!!
Next year we hope to use the World Maths Day ipod app to participate in the event. You can even use the app now to play now and practice your facts! Hopefully next year the date won’t fall during SOL testing. :)
A big thanks to Mrs. Tyler who coordinated and lead the event, and all the teachers who participated (Mrs. Allen, Mrs. Wiggington, Mr. Summers, Mrs. Atkins, and Mrs. Glowenski).
Students in Mrs. Devlin’s Class have created these voicethreads to practice subtraction, teach others how to subtract, and see if anyone has a different way. Check them out, and feel free to comment with your own method!
Subtracting Numbers without Regrouping
Subtracting Numbers with One Regroup
Subtracting Numbers with More than One Regroup
Subtracting Numbers Across Zeros
Note: We did realize that you could keep the writing from fading towards the end of the project. To see how, read how to increase writing time in voicethread.
What do pirates, 2nd graders, gps units, and math all have in common? Pirate geocaching, of course!
This summer, I had the opportunity to work with a great bunch of 2nd graders during summer school. This group loved technology, and so I decided to organize a Math review using our GPS units. Since it was summer time, and we were reading stories about pirates and the ocean, the theme naturally lent itself to pirates! Plus pirates are really fun!!
So, here’s how it all went down:
1) I organized the caches the students needed to find around the pirate theme. At each cache, students needed to solve a 2nd grade math problem to know what to bring back to the “Captain.” A big thanks to Joani Sotherden, Kathy Smith and Diane Rose for this part of the project! They helped me come up with the problems for each cache.
Download cache questions (Print on Avery size 8164 labels).
Here are pictures of the caches and their contents:
Next, Meg Swecker joined me one afternoon to help find great hiding spots for the six caches around South Salem Elementary. We programed in each location on six gps units.
Judy Fisher (the other second grade teacher) and I rounded up some adults to help lead each group. We also organized our two 2nd grade classes into six different teams of four students each. Then morning before the event, we hid the caches in their spots. A clipboard was made for each team that consisted of:
Download Directions and Tips and Tricks
Right before we went out to do the activity, we gave the students pirate hats (free from Long John Silvers), set up the scenario, gave some basic rules, and assigned teams.
Each team was given their clipboard. The adults quickly showed their group of students how to use the gps units, and they were off!
It was so much fun! Everyone had a blast, and I was amazed to see students who struggled to complete work at their desks take lead rolls as they trekked around the schoolyard solving math problems.
A big thanks to all those people who showed up to learn about geocaching or to lend a hand, including…
Co-Teacher: Judy Fisher (she also supplied the awesome pirate hats)
Group Leaders: Judy’s son–“Mr. Fisher,” Hunter Routt, Sherri Tompkins, Debbie Stanley
Photographer : Diane Rose
Math Problems: Joani Sotherden, Kathy Smith and Diane Rose
Partner-in-Crime: Meg Swecker (who’s always up for an adventure, pirate or otherwise)
Magic Treehouse: Pirates at Past Noon by Mary Pope Osbourne
Do Pirates Take Baths? by Kathy Tucker
(This book is great for a writing prompt, especially writing asking and telling sentences).
I ran across this video posted on the ICT U Can! blog and I just had to share it! Too bad we’ve already passed the 100th day of school…this would be perfect to show! Remind me, and I’ll send it out next year around that time.
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