mathcoachblog

Many days, I just like to have something interesting on the projector as kids walk in, hoping to see what conversation is generated. This one comes courtesy of Derek Orr.

As students walked in, many immediately became interested in the equations, and found them “neat”.  For others, it took a few minutes until the “ohhhh” moment hit them.  Some highlights from the discussion?

ME: Who do you think figured these out?

Somebody lonely with a lot of time on their hands

STUDENT: Does it matter if we switch the numbers around?

This led to a review of the commutative property, and we quickly realized that switching the numbers was futile here.

My last period of the day became focused on whether there may be other trios with this unique property. I don’t see any real rhyme or reason to the numbers here, and while the kids thought I might be playing “dumb” I really have no clue if there may be many more examples, or if this is all there is.  But then came the magic words kids of this generation hug like blue blankies:

Let’s Google It!

I was pretty skeptical that anything would come from a Google search.  What would you google anyway? How do you phrase it? But sure enough, after a few minutes one of my students found references and some more interesting examples:

How cool is that!  More on these intersting number facts can be found in a paper called “A Curious Cubic Identity and Self-Similar Sums of Squares” .  Check it out and the associated research!

Today I begin the first of what I hope will be a daily, semester-long look at my classroom openers. These are not necessarily “bell-ringer” activities; rather they are pictures, videos, cartoons, or anecdotes intended to generate discussiom and set a positive mathematical tone for the class.  This semester I have 2 sections of a 9th grade Honors Prob/Stat class, and 2 AP Statistics seminar classes (1/2 credit each), and many of the openers I present this semester will be geared towards high school 9th graders.  I hope you enjoy them!

Today is the first day of school.  The 9th graders spend the morning in the building alone, participating in team-building activities and going on building tours before having lunch together.  In the afternoon, there were 40-minute classes for all grades (we have only 4 class periods a day under block scheduling).

It’s an exciting day for the freshmen, and they come in with many questions about school:   What will class be like? Will it be the same as middle school? How much harder will it be?  I want students to have that “awesome” moment, and set the tone that we will be setting off together on an exciting math journey.

One of my favorite math videos is “Nature By Numbers” – by Spanish graphic designer Cristobal Vila. It’s a short, beautiful, inspirational piece, filled with many unexpected math nuggets:

After the video, I asked the class to share any math ideas they observed in the video, and any experiences they may have had with them.  A few noted the appearance of the Fibonacci Numbers, and one student recalled something about major chords (3rd’s and 5th’s) they had learned in their music experience.  The Fibonacci numbers are an idea we will study later in our course when we get to sequences and series, and are one of my favorite math ideas for its richness and unexpected conncections.

I asked students to reflect upon their math experiences, and think about the “favorite” math ideas: what has made an impact on them as math students? What do they wish they could study more of?  Using the site Answer Garden, students used their cell phone to contribute their thoughts:

Fun discussions and reflections today, and a great springboard as we dive into the deep end of probability tomorrow!

Coming tomorrow: Fascinating Power Problems!