Category: Middle School

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Algebra Middle School Technology

Siemens STEM Academy – Sunday with Lodge

This week, I have the incredible opportunity to participate in the Siemens STEM Academy, held at Discovery HQ in Silver Spring, MD.  This year, I am serving as a team leader, after having been an attendee (fellow) last year.  What a tremendous week of sharing with colleagues who are are all into advancing the cause of STEM education.  As a team leader, I am excited to share my skills and ideas with the group, and will post parts of my presentation to the blog later this week.

Right now, the group is hearing from Dr. Lodge McCammon, a pioneer in using music and video to stimulate and educate students.  This year’s group of 50 fellows, after some initial networking, are hearing about Lodge’s process for putting together his songs, which often require the recruitment of his mom and dad to perform musical parts.

Lodge

But moving beyond the songs, Lodge seeks to have students symbolize the lyrics through movement, the “Kinesthetic Lecture”.  Today, the fellows learned new “moves” to share for Lodge’s “Mitosis” song.  Check out there lyrics here (you can also experience more of Lodge’s great songs there), and the kinesthetic moves below:

Lodge is also an expert in the “flipped” classroom model, where teachers produce videos of lessons and concepts, for students to watch and review at home.  In the presentation, Lodge shared anecdotes and ideas for implementing the flipped model.  Many of his ideas and resources can be found at his FIZZ site on the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation.  Here’s a quick introduction by Lodge explaining the flipped concept:

I have worked with a number of teachers who are interested in the flipped model, and the flipped ideas have received much press through sites like Khan Academy.  Lodge has collected data on the success of the flipped model through middle school math teachers he works with,  including a comparison of a teacher-created video lesson versus Khan Academy.  I appreciate that Lodge stresses the need for teachers to produce their own videos, and continue to be identified as their students’ educational expert:

It’s critical that the teacher be the deliverer.

Teachers teaching cannot be outsourced and replaced.

Teachers matter now more than ever!  You can follow Lodge on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/fizz.education.  What a fantastic kick-off to the week. Looking forward to hearing about and sharing more classroom ideas.

Categories
Geometry Middle School

Happy Summer Pi Day!

Math teachers love March 14, the day where we have a built-in excuse to strong-arm students into bringing cookies, cakes, and pies to class, all under the clever guise of celebrating our irrational friend.  But while we celebrate and embrace 3.14, its fractional buddy 22/7 often trudges on without fanfare.  So, on this July 22, consider this challenge:

  • Which approximation of pi,  3.14 or 22/7, is better?

What spirited debates which can take place by assigning students a side to defend?  A quick visual inspection of the protagonists, labeled on a number line, provides some initial evidence:

Number Line 1

Additionally, this is a great time to discuss and compute error.  Just how far away are we from what we would like to estimate?  And how good of a job have we done?

Number Line 2

Evelyn Lamb provides some pi anecdotes in this month’s Scientific American.  How many digits of Pi does NASA utilize in calculations?  Why do people seek to memorize the digits of pi?

So raise a glass to the “real” pi day!  Off to seek some fresh blueberry pie……

Categories
Algebra Middle School

Letting Go in Algebra Class

A problem from the May, 2012 issue of Mathematics Teacher by Jennifer Kaplan and Samuel Otten outlines a Max/Min problem from calculus which presents a scenario accessible to Algebra 1 and Pre-Algebra students.  In the problem, a dog chases a ball thrown from the beach into the ocean, as shown in the picture.

Beach problem

The challenge is to minimize the amount of time it will take the dog to travel from “me” to the “ball”, if he can run 4 meters per second on the beach, and travel 1 meter per second in the water.

In the past few months, I have been looking for interesting problems to try with different levels of classes, and have made observations about how students approach non-routine problems.  Today, I worked with an 8th grade Honors Algebra 1 class.  It was a nice day, so we gave kids the chance to move outside, work in groups, and take 40 minutes to work on their ideas.  While some groups preferred to work with pencil and paper, others took immediately to the chalk we provided to begin sketching their ideas.

Algebra Chalk

The teams have until next week to develop a solution to present to class.  Many groups after the allotted time seemed to have a process for working towards a solution.  But while I was happy with the persistence the class showed in working through the problem, only one group considered using a variable during their discussion, and that one group only considered x as a distance the dog needs to travel on the beach, and did not pursue it further.  The general procedure so far has been to collect data, make a table, or narrow down by guessing and checking.  So, here are my questions:

  • Should I worry that so few students can apply the algebra they have learned?
  • How can I coax groups to utilize some algebra, without being overly helpful?
  • Should math teachers always feel compelled to demonstrate the “right way”?  Is a non-algebraic solution less valid than an algebraic one?

The traditional math teacher in me can’t wait to jump in and walk students through “my” way to solve it.  But the facilitator in me was thrilled and impressed by the rich discussions taking place today.  It’s hard to let go of old ways of doing things.

Next week, students will produce 60-second videos where they will present their solutions.  Looking forward to the variety of arguments we will certainly see.  Also hoping to work on this problem with our non-honors and academic students.