Category: Class Openers

How I start my class each day

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Class Openers

Class Opener – Day 22 – Mickey D’s contest

The McDonalds Monopoly game is back! Time to fatten up on crappy burgers, cold french fries, and …… look at probability distributions?

McD

Not much time to chat today, as we have a quiz during class. But many students picked up on the fact that McDonalds probably prints a small number of certain, coveted, properties and large numbers of the rest.  This is confirmed by an article on the math behind the McDonalds promotion.

You’ll find many folks online offering to trade game pieces, hoping to locate folks who have the pieces they covet, or to sell their pieces to the highest bidder.  This led to an interesting debate:

If I have Park Place, and you have Boardwalk, should we combine our pieces and split the million dollars?

In my morning class, the vibe was largely pro-sharing, until a few vocal students argued that having Boardwalk was such a huge advantage, we could just go out and buy french fries until Park Place was found. In the end, the class understood the value of these rare pieces, though the discussions and debates were rich.

Now turn your desks and get ready for the quiz!

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Class Openers

Class Opener – Day 21 – 3D Graphs

Today’s opener turned into much, much more than I originally expected – and a truly powerful share at the end.

binomialsFor the last few days, my students have been working through the binomial theorem, expanding and finding specific terms. There has been much movement around class, with students at the board, working together, sharing ideas. I provide problems off the top of my head, giving more difficult ones if the students seem ready, and peeling back if we need more practice.  To provide solutions, I use WolframAlpha to expand the binomial and project solutions from my iPad. This has worked well, but students have also taken note of the deeper info Wolfram provides in these calculations.  In today’s opener, one of these interesting graphs appeared on screen as students enetered:

wolfram

The Wolfram player allowed students to move around this strange object and explore it from all angles. One of my classes impressed me by relating what they related the picture to the Continental Shelf, which they were exploring in science. I provided a 2-minute intro to the (x,y,z) plane – always a fun time.

It was then that one of my students who participates in robotics shared his experience with a 3D printer this summer. I was surprised that few students had heard of these devices, and they seemed intrigued by the idea.  I was reminded of a powerful video involving a student their age, whose father “printed” a prosthetic hand for his son. The end of class then featured two videos I dug up and shared in the last few minutes of class to make students aware of the engineering possibilities.

3D Yoda:

Inspiring story of 3D printing in action:

When the kids leave with a “wow” moment, something has gone right!

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Algebra Class Openers

Class Opener – Day 20 – Infinite Chocolate

How is that possible? Tell me the answer?

Some of my students haven’t picked up on my sneaky side yet. There are no free answers in my class, including this visual which greeted them today:

choc

Some students had seen this before, but few could figure out the mystery of the infinite chocolate. In my afternoon class, one student took charge, showing the subtle differences in the sizes of the pieces as they are reconnect…a future math teacher in the making. Today’s opener wasn’t intended to connect to anything course-related; it’s just a fascinating geometric mind trick, and great for generating math conversation right away. You can Google this problem and find a number of versions, many which explain the illusion, but we ended this opener with a video which shows some potential geometric shenannigans.

Today I desired a short and snappy opening hook, as my goal was to get students to the boards right away to work on binomial theorem problems. This was the second day students viewed videos and took notes for homework, and the response has been outstanding. Classes the last two days have been energetic, as the group doesn’t need to hear me drone on….they heard that at home. The focus today was terms in a binomial sequence – enjoy the video notes here.  Also, pay attention for the rough edit at the end due to my mistake….was more fun to leave that in than to edit it out.