Today was a really interesting day!
First I had students do a multiple intelligence survey. I like this one because it involved simple multiplication and creating a bar graph. It also helped me to see who could follow instructions and work on their own. I gave them colored pencils so they could make it pretty too. =) I did have to define some words and phrases such as 'anagram, puns, spoonerisms', 'ducks in a row', 'the more the merrier', etc. Then I had them tell me their top one or two and explained the meaning of each. Some bought it, some didn't.
I also had students pair up. Each person is responsible when the other person is absent to take care of what they missed. I developed a What You Missed sheet that they have to fill out and make sure handouts are attached. It also has to have my signature so I can verify what they've written. As students told me their partner, I just typed it in to an Excel sheet for future reference.
And now for the exciting part....
That's my house! And I found it on Google Maps! I knew you could see a birds-eye view but I didn't know you could literally drive down the road and do a 360° and make turns and so on. I showed this to my kids every single hour and they absolutely loved it! Kids were crowding around and exclaiming and shouting directions to me. I think we found every kids house and we even visited the Eiffel Tower!
And the St. Louis Arch
It was interesting and educational! I've got to find a great way to tie this into math! I'm thinking for a mid-term project to have students pick a famous/important mathematician (thinking about making the requirement a non-white male figure to make things more interesting) and make a Glogster presentation about their life and mathematical importance instead of the usual essay/presentation. They could find different pictures of where their figure lived, grew up, worked, etc and incorporate into the presentation. I'm sure there are other good ideas to use such as parallel, perpendicular, right angles, curves, circles, etc.
The best thing for me was in seeing how excited the kids were. They wanted to know how to do it themselves and everyone was talking about it. I want to create that feeling as much as I possibly can!
It's empowering for them and for me. It makes me feel like I'm actually doing my job well.
Pretty good for my first Thursday.
I saw in someone else's blog (can't remember where), they took google earth and somehow located various geometric shapes in it and had the students use them doing math problems or something like that. Hey, I'm a history/geography pre-service teacher, so I know little about math! But I think it would be kind of cool to determine area, angles, and degrees using maps and such.
ReplyDeleteI've enjoyed reading your blog during your first week. I'm looking forward to my own first teaching job next August/September.
Yes, you could definitely use the arch as a parabola as well as the Golden Gate Bridge. Could also use it for how many different ways could you get to a certain location. Possibilities are endless.
ReplyDeleteYou will learn so much from reading and commenting on other people's blogs! I highly recommend it as well as talking with people on Twitter and checking out bookmarks on Delicious.
Good luck!