Friday, September 30, 2016

Math Links for Week Ending Sept 29th, 2016

If you like the idea of letting students notice and wonder then you will probably like this site from @jennifuhs4. I know I liked it as soon as I saw the tag line "Always Question the Man". What you will find is a bunch of scenarios where students are given an image and asked what they wonder and then a related image to have them question what they see. Most of them deal with the idea of being a smart consumer but there will be some data management and proportional reasoning in there as well.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://getmadmath.weebly.com/

You know I often dismiss Pentominoes but in this post @MrOrr_Geek has an awesome activity that starts out with kids solving "puzzles" and then works it's way to solving equations. He provides activities that start with hands on paper and pencil and then moves to an Explain Everything file and Desmos activity. Even if you don't have the technology, you could still do most of this with paper and pencil and some photocopies of some hundreds charts. I think when you are having your students solve equations, in the beginning, you want to give them a reason to want to solve the equations. This activity, I think, does a good job in getting them there.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://mrorr-isageek.com/pentomino-puzzles/

I really think @ddmeyer is just showing off. That is, he keeps posting these Desmos activities that have these features that only the Desmos staff can use. Well, here's the latest one. It's an #OpenMiddle task for solving equations. It's relatively simple and you could actually do it with paper and pencil but the self checking features would make this work relatively nicely by using this Desmos version. The basic premiss that students choose four numbers and then those numbers are used to generate an equation they have to solve. The challenge then becomes to generate an equation that has a solution that is closest to zero.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MFM2P
https://student.desmos.com/?prepopulateCode=98sc


I was in a session this week about the Ontario Renewed Math Strategy and part of it was a presentation from Assistant Deputy Minister @CathyMontreuil. I loved that she paraphrased this quote from Seymour Papert about how students don't shy away from challenge but that we often are too boring for them in school so they are not interested in the challenge but that video game manufacturers have figured out the right formula. He is not with us anymore but for more on what he thinks abour technology, see his website
Curriculum Tags: All

The EQAO marks for the province came out last week and the big news is the drop in scores for grade 6 students. Despite the fact that many of the media stories get the data wrong (they often say that 50% of students are failing - it's actually 50% of students that are reaching provincial standard - essentially a mark of 70%), there were some boards that did well. Here @MarkChubb3 breaks down how his board did it. It's a good read. Spoiler alert, it takes time.
Curriculum Tags:All


How fast can you clap? Watch the first act video that @mathletepearce modified from @nathankraft1 original (he blacked out the clap count at first). Have some contests in your own class and talk about proportional reasoning at the same time.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MAT1L, MAT2L, MPM1D, MFM1P, MFM2P
https://tapintoteenminds.com/3act-math/fast-clapper/

I always like these images from @JessicaHagy on her Indexed blog. I always think they can be used to help students understand the nature of plotting points on graphs by asking them where people with certain characteristics will be on the graph or why the shape of the graphs fit the descriptions. Here's a couple that you could use either when talking about linear relationships or quadratic ones.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MFM2P
http://thisisindexed.com/2016/09/something-worthy-attention/
http://thisisindexed.com/2016/09/deadlines-make-hungry/




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