Math in the Movies

Besides movies like A Beautiful Mind and Alice in Wonderland math movies are few and far between, but there are more recent ones such as The Hangover, Little Big League, and even Mean Girls.   Ones that incorporate mathematics and even math you can use in your classroom.  (More featured at Math Movies )  But a more interesting way is to incorporate movies that use mathematics and do so poorly are good ways to show why knowing mathematics is a good thing.  Some links are Math Mistakes and Movie Mistakes both of these have explanations on why the problem stated in the movie or advertisement was wrong.



QR Codes

You want future teaching, I will give you future teaching.  QR codes, they are quick and easy especially if you have iPad's or iPod's in your classroom already.  QR codes is a box that looks like a market checkout item, but it is a two dimensional bar code.  You scan the bar code with your smart phone using an application* and up pops a website, applet, or some other piece of information. 

Above is the QR code for this website.  QR codes can be used in many different ways, especially in hands on activities or stations.  There are many different possibilities you can use this for, you can post QR codes around your room and piece together a math history lesson or a crime in the classroom and the murderer has to be found.  This is a QR code generator that is free to use and easy to set up:  QR Generator.

Differentiating Materials

It has been a while since the last post, so as a little "I'm sorry," I will post all the differentiating materials I have accumulated over the past few weeks.  This may be a little overkill, but you can use the materials as you wish and coming up with the different methods of using them is half the fun.  So until my next post, happy teaching!
The Incredible Disappearing Line
Addition Pyramid

100 Chart

Magic Octagon

Grot Paper

Fraction Nomograph

Create Your Own Money

Pencast

The new livescribe pens are making their way across the country.  Very few classrooms have them and current graduate courses are now offering classes in livescribe (and even giving away free livescribe pens to those who attend).  As just in their infancy there is little about the pencasts in mathematics.

• You can upload pencasts as a teacher as given homework.
• Students can upload pencasts for daily assignments or even quizzes.
• Pencasts help ELL students by not only repeating the sentence in English, but also in Spanish as well.
• There is a wide range of applications and settings you can use this for in mathematics.

Featured here are current applications and techniques used for incorporating mathematics into livescribe pens called, Mathcasts, Livescribe, and featured below is a current math teacher using livescribe pens in her classroom.

Girly Math

"Two planes are heading toward each other at ..." is this entertaining?  No!  Especially not for girls.  How many of your math questions have: chocolate, puppies, birthday cake, pool parties, hair salons, jewelry, or lemonade?  None?  I'm guessing at least 50% of your class are girls.  Different ways to incorporate more girly ideas in your classroom are:

• what do x's mean in real life? Kisses, have your students blow kisses, not to other people, but they can have other meanings.
• replacing x with other symbols such as smiley faces, flowers, etc.
• Factoring is like a party.
• Distributing is saying "hi," to everyone at the party.
• Factoring is pulling people out of a party.

Other materials for girls in algebra and pre-algebra is in the book "Hot X: Algebra Exposed," by Danica McKellar.

Mnemonics

Mnemonics helps students learn, especially long drawn out instruction that needs to be summed up and remembered on a quiz or test, such as the order of operations, using PEMDAS: or please excuse my dear aunt sally.  Featured below are others used in the field of mathematics.  Personally I think mnemonics are best used if they are student generated each class period. 

• Word Problem Solving: STAR: Search the word problem. Translate the words to an equation. Answer the problem. Review the solution.
• Dividing Fractions: KCF: Keep the first fraction. Change the sign. Flip the last fraction.
• Numbers in Pi: I took a quick glimpsing at bright stars far north: 3.1415926535
• Absolute Value Inequalities: GOR-LAND: G(greater than) OR- L(less than) AND
• Long Division: Dracula Must Suck Blood: Divide, Multiply, Subtract, Bring down.

Laughter

We all know that laughter increases a student's "like-ability" of a particular class or teacher.  Jokes are a great way to get student's interested in mathematics, other humor, and pranks.  Like Projector Pranks is a fun and interesting site.  Some jokes are only for math and some are in between, you need to find the right kind of humor fits your classroom.  Some of the more interesting ones or more particularly ones I found funny.


Math is like love; a simple idea, but it can get complicated.

Golden rule for math teachers: You must tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, but not the whole truth.

John was a great friend of his five-year old granddaughter. They discussed everything including math and John was very proud of the girls math talents. The child went to kindergarten; In two weeks the she ask John to help with the difficult math problem: "There are four airplanes flying, then two more airplanes join them. How many airplanes are flying now? John was very disappointed by the simplicity of the problem. "What confuses you?" he asked. The child says: " I know, of course, that 4 + 2 =6, but I cannot figure out what the airplanes have do with this!" 

There really are only two types of people in the world, those that DON'T DO MATH, and those that take care of them.

Trust me, there are plenty more out there.

Math Greetings

I was informed the other day that one of my colleagues when beginning her math class introduces them by saying in a loud and booming voice, "HELLO Mathematicians."  And they go through a sometimes lengthy chant and by the end of the chant the students are there to learn.  So I set out to find some chants that I could possibly use for my future classroom, then nothing there.  There are almost no sources out there find chants you can use in your classroom.  Yes, Power Teaching is a great tool to use, but sometimes I need just a starter for an 8 AM class that can't get ready.  Then I found this YouTube video and I have been trying to make my own since.

Math Poems

In previous posts I have gone over incorporating literature in to mathematics.  Here is another idea incorporating poems in your lessons.  Below is a poem featured by Math Story there are also many sites that allow you to look and use poems in your classroom.

Cool as a circle,
Don't fool around,
Got somewhere to go,
Covering ground...
Yeah, I'm a circle,
3-60 degrees,
Rolling in circles,
Gliding with ease...

Having literature in your classroom not only increases literacy among your age group, but increases how much they like math.  Having students that want to be in your class everyday makes teaching worthwhile.  Happy Teaching!

Math Music

I have heard that students in recovery math can't take music or band.  Why make them choose?  Incorporate music in math, it is easy and makes math fun for the students who couldn't or wanted to be in music.  I have heard that math recovery teachers teach from a "script," when did we start taking the art out of teaching.  (Isn't that what makes great teachers great?)  Featured below is a song for graphing, called "We Will Graph You!"  and goes to the tune of 'We Will Rock You.'

Buddy, you're a man with a hard time graphing.
All you need to do is find the m and the b.
It's not hard you see,
You put your pencil on the b.
Graphing's not as hard as you thought it might be, singing
Chorus: We will, we will graph you!
             We will, we will graph you!
Now you've got a point on the y-intercept.
All you need to do is find the rest of it.
You need the slop to go on,
That's rise over run.
Delta y in delta x, boy it's fun, singing...
(Chorus)
Next, take the coefficients of the x baby.
Find two more points and another one maybe.
Go up or down first,
Then go across.
I dig graphing lines, I think it's boss, singing...
(Chorus)

There are many other sources you can use to have music in math class.  A few sources are Math Sing/Song and Songs for Teaching. 

Proof Blocks

A great tool that I have began to play around with are Proof Blocks.  http://www.proofblocks.com/ They are easy to use and a great tool for advanced geometry where students are confused with angle congruencies and triangle congruencies and just getting started on proof writing.  BOOM!! Proof Blocks, simple to use for almost any proof. 

• Naturally prevents flawed logical arguments
• Facilitates working forwards, backwards or from the middle of proofs
• Allows students to easily verify the correctness of their work
• Supports visual, kinesthetic and English language learners

It is an easy way for students to gather and organize information and their thinking.  Here is a link for the complete list of the proof blocks and the accessories that come with them.  Happy Teaching!

http://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/61940248?access_key=key-pquubvnkwlei8emzxtk

Nonlinguistic Representation

When teachers represent ideas, how do they represent them? Linguistically!  But, students learn by using there senses of touch, auditory, visual, etc.  Using both linguistic and nonlinguisitic representation students are better able to think and recall information.

Here are two generalizations that can guide teachers in the use of nonlinguistic representations in the classroom from Classroom Instruction that Works by Robert Marzano.

1. A variety of activities produce nonlinguistic representations.
• Such as creating graphic representations, making physical models, generating mental pictures, drawing pictures and pictographs, and engaging in kinesthetic activity.
2. Nonlinguistic representations should elaborate on knowledge
• For example, when elaborating on knowledge of fractions one should construct a mental model of how a fraction might appear in concrete form.
• The student will understand it in greater and recall it more easily.

In every class there are students who can just "see" the problem, or visualize what is in front of them.  In my calculus class there were other college students who could visualize three dimensional shapes, I was not one of them.  But I entered modern geometry and understood everything, the veil disappeared and I could see what I haven't before.  I believe all students whether they like math, love math, or hate math have this veil over their head preventing them from visualizing the problem.  It is the job of the teacher to lift this veil.

Summer Reading

Along with strategies and techniques for math teachers another field I am interested in is brain research.  Over the summer I have read In a Reading State of Mind, by Douglas Fisher and Brain Rules, by John Medina (www.brainrules.net/).  I have started in on some of Malcom Gladwell and Oliver Sacks with the intentions of finding small minute details on the inner-workings of student's brains.

Since reading these books I have a greater understanding of the way learning takes place in the classroom.

• The time when learning is the highest is the 10 minutes in the beginning of class when you have your students full attention.  Thus, go over the new important facts and relate back to yesterdays notes after.
• Student's learn at 10 minute intervals, when ten minutes is up their minds begin to wander.  Switching up activities or using a different technique every ten minutes keeps the students engaged.
• Every student learns differently (Howard Gardner: Multiple Intelligences) and the environment in which they learn is even greater.

The book I want to read was currently handed out to every Omaha Public Schools teacher:

"The Cultural Proficiency Journey: Moving Beyond Ethical Barriers Toward Profound School Change"