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!
http://embed.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover.html
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.
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)
http://www.box.net/embed/jbvts7i9vv0drnk.swf
Mrs. Hushour’s Class (Clearbrook — 3rd Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/8uxgefi4fhqylcz.swf
Mrs. Bralley’s Class (Oak Grove — 3rd Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/ffvtfngm36n4soa.swf
Mrs. Sharp’s Block 1 Class (Oak Grove — 5th Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/m0584jah192g8es.swf
Mrs. Sharp’s Block 2 Class (Oak Grove — 5th Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/20veykortu0qnde.swf
Mrs. Mortez’s Block 1 Class (Oak Grove –5th Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/5dzx3hzj54xmkji.swf
Mrs. Mortez’s Block 2 Class (Oak Grove — 5th Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/ufijsvnfudk2xjp.swf
Mrs. Grave’s Class (Clearbrook — 5th Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/x5aloxuaova6kua.swf
Mrs. Hudson’s Class (Clearbrook — 5th Grade)
http://www.box.net/embed/v8rmj830gq6q0jo.swf
Teaching with Technology 