I love this new activity from Desmos (with the help of Dan Meyer and Christopher Danielson) on rates of increase called Waterline. I recall many years ago creating an activity like this for calculus dealing with rates where we had different profiles of containers and had to predict the rate of water level increase given a constant rate of increase of volume. Back then it was static. Now we have the dynamics of the Desmos engine to make this activity dynamic. In the app you have to predict draw the graph of how you think height will vary and then check it agains what really happens. Nicely done.
In grade 7 this is the last time we formally talk about measuring angles and this activity from Exit 10a is a great way to consolidate that skill with students. I love the game aspect of this activity and if you gave students cards with an angle on each side then you could add a bit of strategy to the game. Thanks to Dan Meyer for this one.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7 http://exit10a.blogspot.ca/2014/04/pie-eating-contest.html
I don't think you can get too elementary when talking about probability in any grade. Conversely, no matter how advanced your course may be in probability, it is good to be able to simplify things for them. To that end, here is a great activity for discussing the difference between experimental and theoretical probability. Thanks to Dan Meyer for this one.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U http://accumulatearate.wordpress.com/2014/02/24/try-your-luck/
And yet another Dan Meyer find on probability. This time its probability bingo. Roll two dice (with colours rather than numbers) and the card has all the possible outcomes on it. First one to fill their card wins. Its the perfect game to talk about outcomes, sample space and probability.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U http://mathequalslove.blogspot.ca/2014/01/probability-bingo.html
We have all done these types of questions: "you buy a widget that have a regular price of $45 but is on sale for 15% off. How much will you pay for this widget including tax" Boring, right? Instead how about make a game of it, like Fawn Nguyen did with this activity using shopping at Walmart (or any other chain. In the end the students have to get a total value that is closest to $500. Take a look here
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8 http://fawnnguyen.com/2014/04/21/20140408.aspx
Here's a nice proportional reasoning (or possibly linear relationships) 3 Acts task from Tap Into Teen Minds. How many reams of paper does it take to get to the top? Take a look at the task and find out.
Curriculum Tags, Gr7 Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P http://tapintoteenminds.com/3act-math/stacking-paper/
Great examples of parabolic motion with these fountains on this video clip. Thanks to Joe Tatti for this one.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P, MBF3C, MCF3M, MCR3U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrA0bdFZo10
By now if you aren't following Dan Meyer then I don't know what you are waiting for. Dan was the keynote speaker at CUE this year and his talk was about using tech to fuel his perplexity. It's a great video and has tonne of great ideas. The tools he talks about are things like using an RSS reader (he and I both use Feedly), social book marking (he and I both use Delicious) and all kinds of other tools (Kyle at Tap into Teen Minds has also posts about using some of those tools and more here). You can see his website that created with resources on his talk here http://cue14.mrmeyer.com/. And although this is not necessarily related to using tech, here's a quote that I think says a lot about math teachers in general and why we may have a hard time connecting to students:
"I got into math teaching because I loved math. I needed no incentive to love math. Line up a whole bunch of problems, I'll do em. Attach your approval as my teacher and I'll do even more. But then they gave me students who, low and behold, don't love math like I do."
Hey, I really like this Speed Match game for low level vocabulary practice. I think kids would play it and learn a bit of vocabulary to boot. I say it's low level because, in general, memorizing formulas or definitions is just that, low on the cognitive scale. But having kids memorize facts is not necessarily a bad thing. You just can't make it the prime focus of your teaching curriculum. So this game is a great way that you can get that stuff done for kids. And it works on the iPad. You can create your own game and do so without creating an account too. And another one from Mathy Cathy is Kahoot which is an online MC game where speed is of the essence. http://www.mathycathy.com/blog/2014/04/superteachertools-net-speed-match/ http://www.mathycathy.com/blog/2014/04/kahoot-a-great-formative-freebie/
Kyle at the Tap Into Teen Minds blog continues to catalogue all those 3 Act Math tasks being created around the web. He matches them up to curriculum (both common core and Ontario math) and usually adds his own worksheets and extras. This one is referencing one of Dan Meyer's from a couple of years ago and does a good job of dealing with rates of change. Click on the Access Math Task button to get Dan's original 3 Act task download and click on the Access Handouts button to get Kyle's handouts.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P http://tapintoteenminds.com/3act-math/bolt/
Do you want to give your kids a good straightforward traditional math review of Calculus. Then look no further than this online primer course given by MIT professor Gilbert Strang. It is intended for high school students so feel free to share.
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-005-highlights-of-calculus-spring-2010/
I love this image of an hour glass that demonstrates Archimedes proof that the volume of a cylinder is the same as the volume of a sphere plus the volume of a cone (with height equal to the diameter of the sphere for both the cone and the cylinder)
I have been showing this example from Deborah Ball for about a year now. I really like how she really articulates what distinguishes a good math teacher from someone who just knows how to do math. The neat thing is she does it in front of the Michigan legislature. For a longer talk by Dr. Ball on this topic you can click here.
Curriculum Tags: All http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2014/04/02/the-infinite-variety-of-wrong-answers/
I am fascinated by this Veronoi Diagram. Each dot represents an airport and the regions represent areas that are closest to that airport (compared to another airport). So the lines separating the regions represent places that are equidistant to the nearest airports. Its a really neat geometric property that could be adapted to the geometry units in grade 7&8 connecting to quadrilaterals. On the site the diagram is an interactive so that the entire globe's airports are mapped out. Thanks to @ddmeyer for this one.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8 https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/voronoi/airports/
I like it when concepts can be introduced in unique ways. Here Mathy Cathy does has an interesting way to introduce compound events in probability. A simple true and false test (with random answers). Kind of reminds me a bit of the March Madness contest but on a smaller scale.
Curriculum Tags: MBF3C, MDM4U http://www.mathycathy.com/blog/2014/03/true-or-false/
We have seen cell phone plan questions before. And they all have a little bit of the pseudo math thing going on. But this one takes a slightly different take. Instead the standard fixed monthly cost and then a per minute charge (which is typically not how a phone plan works anymore) it has the fixed cost and then the extra cost for more data. A little more realistic.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MFM2P http://www.yummymath.com/2014/cell-phone-plans/
I am a sucker for raw data. On this site Visualizing.org not only is there neat visualizations but they have all kinds of raw data. Check out this set on over 40,000 meteorites. Enjoy.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U http://visualizing.org/
I have been known to have a bit of heavy foot while driving. So it's ironic that I have been saying that speeding doesn't get you there much faster (in general). I even wrote a task about it about 10 years ago. You can download it here. But now you have the data to show you in what situations speeding could possibly pay off. Its a really great way to talk about rational functions.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U http://lifehacker.com/does-speeding-really-get-you-there-any-faster-1556767685
I was shopping with my daughter the other day and saw this sign for a sale. I like it because the implication is that it's a 60% discount but, in fact, the successive discounts work out to 52%. The math is all right on the sign but it would be a good discussion for grade 7&8 students about percents.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8 instagram.com/p/mduvdTx66Y/
Some common thoughts about cancer that data shows is false
Unless treated, cancer is fatal
The earlier you diagnose and treat it the greater the chance of being cured
So for years and years I have been saying that there is tonnes of mathematics in digital animation. This has been mostly when I talk about vectors but finally someone who is actually in the animation biz (you might have heard of Pixar) explicitly makes the connection. Not to vectors but to grade 10 math and finding the midpoint of a line segment. This is an awesome video that answers the question when is this math ever used (note I didn't say "when are we ever gonna use this" since not everyone will become an animator). And as a bonus, since this is a TEDed talk, that means there are extra features like lessons and quizzes.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D http://ed.ted.com/lessons/pixar-the-math-behind-the-movies-tony-derose
I have been sitting on this one for a few weeks. And when I saw that a friend of mine really liked the concept and completely turned her on to QR codes I finally decided to put it in. The idea is that if you have a worksheet you can have a QR code for each question that links to the solution video. That is what they have done at Slackmath. They have taken videos online that answer questions and created worksheets from the questions. Although I wasn't particularly thrilled with some of the videos, I do like the concept. Take a look here. They have the worksheets broken down by topics so you can find what you are looking for
Curriculum Tags: All http://www.slackmath.com/
This is an interesting problem (it may be a little tongue and cheek). But the idea is "how much is an art gallery worth". The calculation done basically puts a value on a painting and then calculates the interest that it would generate if it was turned into cash. Its highly idealized but it could be an interesting problem dealing with percents and number sense in grade 7,8 or 9
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/business/economy/costs-benefits-and-masterpieces-in-detroit.html
There is no end to people dissecting movies to talk about their realism. And SciFi movies get their share of the hits. This time dealing with the movie Pacific Rim and the frequency with which the monsters emerge from their watery birthplaces. In the movie talk about the exponential frequency that the monsters come but in practice they don't actually come that way. See the analysis here.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MHF4U, MAP4C http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/but-not-simpler/2014/03/25/pacific-rim-followed-math-kaiju-won/
Perhaps I have been waiting and waiting to finally have a reason to show a Monty Python clip in a math class. This may be it. I think you could easily make a really cool ratio problem out of it (trying to convert from one figure to another to determine the correct rate). The mathematical mayhem starts about 40 seconds in and then quickly degrades in to normal Python silliness.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGEeLtqtNvU
I love this new activity from Desmos (with the help of Dan Meyer and Christopher Danielson) on rates of increase called Waterline. I recall many years ago creating an activity like this for calculus dealing with rates where we had different profiles of containers and had to predict the rate of water level increase given a constant rate of increase of volume. Back then it was static. Now we have the dynamics of the Desmos engine to make this activity dynamic. In the app you have to predict draw the graph of how you think height will vary and then check it agains what really happens. Nicely done. 
In grade 7 this is the last time we formally talk about measuring angles and this activity from Exit 10a is a great way to consolidate that skill with students. I love the game aspect of this activity and if you gave students cards with an angle on each side then you could add a bit of strategy to the game. Thanks to Dan Meyer for this one.
I don't think you can get too elementary when talking about probability in any grade. Conversely, no matter how advanced your course may be in probability, it is good to be able to simplify things for them. To that end, here is a great activity for discussing the difference between experimental and theoretical probability. Thanks to Dan Meyer for this one.
And yet another Dan Meyer find on probability. This time its probability bingo. Roll two dice (with colours rather than numbers) and the card has all the possible outcomes on it. First one to fill their card wins. Its the perfect game to talk about outcomes, sample space and probability.
We have all done these types of questions: "you buy a widget that have a regular price of $45 but is on sale for 15% off. How much will you pay for this widget including tax" Boring, right? Instead how about make a game of it, like Fawn Nguyen did with this activity using shopping at Walmart (or any other chain. In the end the students have to get a total value that is closest to $500. Take a look here
Here's a nice proportional reasoning (or possibly linear relationships) 3 Acts task from Tap Into Teen Minds. How many reams of paper does it take to get to the top? Take a look at the task and find out.
