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Clothes Shopping

The time is fast approaching when you will be out interacting with actual high school students, and then you will need to change your wardrobe (most of you). Now, your goals here are two fold.

1. Don’t look like a high school student. Unless you’re over 35, you’ll probably make things easier on yourself (especially as a temporary classroom presence) if you dress in a way that distinguishes you from the students around you. Gentlemen: you can take the time honored approach of wearing a tie. Putting on a tie makes you look older and more official. Gentlewomen, we have a more difficult problem: you know how to dress without taking any effort, and you know how to dress up, and neither of these is the desired result. What you need are “teacher clothes”. If you own a suit, that will probably work, but only if it doesn’t look too nice, which brings us to goal 2:

2. Look less interesting than the math you are teaching. Really. If they’re looking at you, they’re not thinking about the math. Sometimes they’re really not thinking about the math…. Let me share a couple of stories that are (thankfully) not about me.

Mrs H has a class of 9th grade algebra students, mostly boys, that has gone from abysmal (mostly failing) to really pretty good (good grades so far) due to one unusually attractive girl being in, and then leaving the class. As one boy put it “I just couldn’t think straight when she was in here. She was so hot that it just took my breath away!” One of Mrs H’s loyal readers sent her an article about a study that shows that men get measurably stupider after talking to an attractive woman. Mrs H tells it better than I do, of course, so you should go read it (the story of the freshmen boys, the study of intellectually challenged men, and the follow up with the algebra class).

Then we have the story from Rebecca Bell Branstetter who was told in an evaluation that she wasn’t totally professional because her pants were a little tight. Yeah. And then there were the cat calls on the day when she decided to dress in what would be considered a professional outfit if she were not, in fact, working in a middle school (read the whole painful story here) .

So anyway, the moral of the story is: look neat, but don’t look too good. When you were dressed up last week I saw a few shirts that were a little too low, or a little too tight. So anyway, please look at your wardrobe critically before someone else does.

2010 02 23 LaurelLangford General teaching tips Comments (1) Permalink

3D Geometry

I’ve been looking for software that will let me make some nice 3D objects for students to play with. I like doing 3D geometry, but in the Math for El Ed class, we spend one day a week in the lab, and sometimes it seems like it’s wasted because 3D is so hard to come by. Anyway, I’ve found a couple I like. One is Cabri 3D. Cabri is the main competitor to Geometers Sketchpad, and has been for years, so they have a nice slick product, and I finally got around to looking at their demo. It took me a while to figure out the interface (I kept making points that I wanted to be free points, but it turned out were points in the x-y plane, but I eventually got that straightened out and I’m liking it better all the time). Anyway, I think I see a grant application in my future perhaps (to get a site license). I could afford a 1-year license myself, but….

I’ve spent my afternoon here, playing with other options, and most of them are just not quite as good (WinGeom is free, but clunky, for instance).

The big surprise, however, is that you can do a lot with Google’s free software SketchUp, that’s made for making models of houses and such.

A prism and pyramid

I had to watch about 4 of the training videos, but after that I was pretty please with what I could do.

2010 02 21 LaurelLangford Uncategorized Comments (1) Permalink

Rhythm Wheels

I found this really cool website the other day… it combines math, social studies,  and music! It is called a rhythm wheel and in math, the students use it to find the LCM (Go to teaching materials, and then the short version of  “lesson plan for rhythm wheels”). For social studies, they have great references to how different beats are used to make music in different cultures and the students can actually put several wheels together to make  a song. They also have a page for each culture providing its history, traditional instruments, and lots of other great information. For music, this is a really great and easy way to get kids to express themselves and try out different mixes of beats and rhythms. To use/experiment with it, click on “run online version” on the left side of the screen.

http://csdt.rpi.edu/latino/rhythm/rhy_intr.htm

2010 02 14 mattcartier Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Good worksheets and bad worksheets

Kate Nowak at f(t) shared some of her thoughts about worksheets a few months back. As she says: there are good worksheets and bad worksheets. The good ones make you think. The good ones give you feedback so it is self correcting. The good ones are focused: you spend a lot of time thinking about one situation, rather than a little time thinking about a lot of different situations. Go look at her post on what makes a good worksheet. One nice thing about self-checking work is that it puts the emphasis on the process rather than the answer.

Another thing you can do self-checking-ness with is games. In particular row games. Kate describes row games better than I do, go read her description. She also shared a bunch of her row games. I’m going steal one for us to do in class, but the whole set are cool to look through.

2010 02 13 LaurelLangford Uncategorized Comments (0) Permalink

Logarithmic Swoosh Rule

Logs have always been a hard concept to get across to students.  I learned a helpful tool in my pre calculus class my junior year of high school that has not only helped me from that point on but everyone who I have taught since then.  I call it the swoosh rule.  I am in the process of finding any copyright owners but I believe that the title will soon be the Casci Swoosh Rule.  The swoosh rule helps with the following problem.

The hardest obstacle for students to get over is the conversion between an equation in logarithmic form and an equation in exponential form.  The swoosh rule is a fun drawing technique that helps the student remember where the components of the log function go in the exponential function.

This will help the student remember that the exponent function is the base of the log function raise to the solution of the log function and that it equals the term/quantity of what you are taking the log of.  When teaching it helps to say what your doing.  For example, for the problem above, you would say, “a raise to the c equals b.”
Performing the swoosh rule the opposite way has some variety and really can be done in a couple of different ways.  My favorite is using the “swoosh” in the same direction as the technique shown above only with the exponential equation.

Again it is helpful to say, “log base a of b equals c.”  I think this is the best way of going from an exponential function to a log function because it the same swoosh motion as the original conversion from logs to exponents.  There is another variation that I have found but is not as affective.  Enjoy!

Here is a great site for checking your work.  It is a logrithmic calculator.

2010 02 11 casciuwrf General teaching tips Comments (2) Permalink

Do Learning Styles Exist?

The following link takes you to a youtube video posted by Professor Daniel Willingham discussing his study on learning styles and his belief that they do not exist.  I am not sure if this video gives me enough to base a decision as to whether or not learning styles exist.  However, don’t take my word for it and check out the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIv9rz2NTUk

I worked a lot with learning styles in my Agricultural Education course about curriculum.  I had to design a unit plan that used layered curriculum while incorporating different assessments for a variety of learning styles.  For example, the unit was Swine Science and the objective to be met was to define basic swine terminology and the possible assessments the students could chose from to show me they met the objective included: playing swine terminology bingo, creating flash cards, taking a quiz, and creating a comic strip or story using the terminology.  The variety in the assessments allow the students’ strengths and interests to be included into the class, thus the students should be more engaged.  I personally love projects where I can use creativity and take my understanding to a higher level.  Also, it helps me remember the content so much more than an exam or quiz.  So whether or not you believe in learning styles, varied teaching styles with varied assessment can help students stay engaged and help the students develop a passion for learning.

2010 02 10 wirkusk Uncategorized Comments (2) Permalink

Divide by Zero

I read the posts “Divide by Zero” and I was really intrigued that he gave the easiest problems the most points.  When he explained why it made complete sense.  The class is based on competition and they are in groups of four or five.  Everyone is supposed to do the problems and if the hard ones are worth the most, only the students who excel at math would “win.”  Once he figured out that making the easier ones worth more, it motivated all the students to try their hardest.  I love how he was able to motivate all the students in his classes.

2010 02 09 k_deboer Uncategorized Comments (1) Permalink

New Teacher Advice

When I checked out the link for the blog Approaching Infinity I found a document he had attached in his blog under “New Teacher Advice.” It is just power point slides so it is brief but I think it’s easy to see what the presenter was getting at.  I downloaded it and looked through the slides and found that some of the content includes things we are learning about already–different strategies to use in the classroom and types of questions to ask students.  However, I think it also included some great tips about how to organize your own materials and ideas, great ways to start planning, different approaches to daily assessment and reminders about motivating students or assigning group work.   The link for the blog post is: http://approachinfinity.blogspot.com/search/label/new%20teacher%20advice.  But the document of slides is something you’ll have to click on and download once you get there.

2010 02 09 Marisa Uncategorized Comments (1) Permalink

Factoring

I only hope that someday when my students are bored in class they are doing this. :)

2010 02 03 2k4 Uncategorized Comments (2) Permalink

Converting Units with “domino” handout

As I was just clicking on links I stumbled across this cool way to convert units of measurement on the blog approaching infinity.

http://approachinfinity.blogspot.com/2009/12/converting-units-of-measurement-using.html

When I was in Middle School I had trouble understanding how to convert from one unit to the other. I eventually just memorized how to do that without learning any trick of memorization. This teacher used a method using domino like tools called “connectors.” He goes into a step by step process on how to use this handout. I think that it is worth checking out and using in your future classrooms.

2010 02 03 lroubal algebra
Math Teaching Ideas Comments (4) Permalink