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# Posts

### October 25, 2014

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There are no foolish questions and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions. Charles P SteinmetzThe 299th day of the year; If a cubic cake was cut with 12 straight cuts, it can produce a maximum of 299 pieces.... a good day to "let 'em eat cake."EVENTS1676 Newton, through the intermediary of Oldenburg, wrote Leibniz concerning his work on the calculus. An anagram contained the statement of the problem of integrating differential equations. *VFR 1738 Theophilus Grew, […]
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Yesterday, I was going to use the height of a penny in a math question on a quiz so I googled "width of a penny".  It said it was 3/4 inch.  That wasn't what I wanted, but I liked the number.  I went to bed thinking about it and woke up with this....Maybe an actual original idea for the #MTBoS?There has been recent discussion on blogs and twitter about how to teach dividing by fractions besides just telling the kids to multiply by the reciprocal - the why part.It got me to […]
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I've got some brilliant gems for you this week. As usual Twitter has been on top form. 1. Quick Key Last week I wrote about Plickers, which is an app you can use in the classoom for formative assessment - you need a device but your students don't. Today I'm suggesting another app that you can use for assessment - Quick Key. With this app you can set multiple choice homeworks or tests and mark
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Students aren’t kidding when they ask, “When will we ever need to know this?” In How the Brain Learns Mathematics, David Sousa suggests that students need a reason to move information from short-term memory to long-term memory. What opportunity do we give our students to reflect on what they are learning and why during class? […]
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The First 100 Prime Numbers An integer n is a prime number if it has no divisors (except for 1 and itself). Another way to say this is that a set of n objects cannot be broken into pieces of equal size. Or you could say that the equation n=a*b can never be true, where a and b are integers. Beginners sometimes get confused by the term "divisor". When mathematicians say that one integer divides another integer they mean with no remainder. Prime numbers are fundamental numbers because.. Any […]
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The bee-bot programmable robot teaches logic, the basics of programming and how a computer "thinks."
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“Profit Doubles at G.M., as It Strives to Move Past Its Litany of Recalls”: General Motors’ quarterly earnings report on Thursday was noteworthy mostly for what it lacked: another big financial charge for safety recalls. After running up special charges of nearly \$3 billion in the first half of the year for safety problems, G.M., […]
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[sorry if this isn't edited well, limited editing time due to lots of kid activities today] Saw this post on twitter earlier in the week: It made for a great follow up to a previous Family Math which also happened … Continue reading →
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Sort of a rambling post. But trying to make some sense of my thinking… I always appreciate posts from @emergentmath.  This particular post made me pause, I had just completed the MARS task, Boomerangs, he references.  We are in the midst of our systems unit. I used Mary & Alex ‘ s suggestions with beginning […]
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Recall that in the Baron's latest game, for a cost of one coin, Sir R----- could roll two dice and have from the Baron coins equal in number to the best of them. In return, the Baron would have from Sir R----- coins equal to the roll of a solitary die.
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One of the primary goals this year is to find opportunities to use rates in a more practical setting. This past week my classes started to explore rates in more detail.  Students studied visual patterns and rules last week and this has led up to using/converting rates with formulas. While planning I dug out a […]
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Another post from Tap Into Teen Minds. Enjoy! This multi-question 3 Act Math Task incorporates important concepts related to ratios, percentages and proportional reasoning when we enlarge a cheque. The post Big Cheques [3 Act Math Task] appeared first on Tap Into Teen Minds.
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I don't know about you, but my experiences with even the best Shell Centre tasks (their Formative Assessment Lessons, or "FALs") have been hit or miss. These are among the best anywhere, and while I generally love the ideas of their tasks, in practice, I almost always need to tweak their implementations to make them work in my classroom and with my students.I wonder if this is not inevitable, given the highly customized nature of scaffolding.I experienced this phenomenon yet again […]

### October 24, 2014

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in praise of wallowing in the middle of stuff -- marinating, versus just discoveringAs much as I love discovery learning, there is a dirty little secret I really hate to have to admit: discovery is, in some ways, a cheap thrill.It's easy to get excited about something new. It's harder to get enthusiastic for the middle. And this creates problems when it comes to developing fluency and deep conceptual understanding. I think that's why my students (who are all superb students, probably in the top […]
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Unfortunately what is little recognized is that the most worthwhile scientific books are those in which the author clearly indicates what he does not know; for an author most hurts his readers by concealing difficulties. E. TorricelliThe 298th day of the year; If you multiply 298 by (298 + 3) you get a palindromic number, 89,698. Can every number be similarly adjusted to make a palindrome?EVENTS1666 William Lilly, astrologer, was called before the House of Commons to explain the embarrassing […]
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Come ero solito dire,la rivoluzione capita difficilmente a quelli di una certa età, perchè hanno viaggiato sullo stesso vecchio binario troppo a lungo e così, quando lo scambio sornione arriva, loro perdono l'occasionee prendono il binario sbagliato mentre l'allegro ultimo vagone svolazza viae il conduttore del vapore non riconoscegli slogan di un tempoe i vecchi corrono sullo sperone rossiccio che termina nell'erba morta dove giacciono manifesti di […]
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My Ph.D. student Silas Johnson just posted his thesis paper to the arXiv, and it’s cool, and I’m going to blog about it! How should you count number fields?  The most natural way is by discriminant; you count all degree-n number fields K with a given Galois group G in S_n and discriminant bounded in […]
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Thursday was gorgeous.  A road trip north to our state capitol, Frankfort, with my husband and my superintendent. Ashland Inc. Teacher Achievement Awards…and I was 1 of 24!!!  I debated on whether or not to post, but I am proud of my work in education and why not celebrate it!  I teared up multiple times […]
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Descripción de la miniTAREA: Comprobar que la afirmación es correcta, realizando para ello las investigaciones pertinentes acerca del tamaño de los distintos planetas del Sistema Solar, teniendo en cuenta la distancia Tierra-Luna.   Fuente: Wikipedia Curioso dato: Los planetas del Sistema…Read more →
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[Cross Posted on the One Good Thing Teach blog] Setup: We’ve been talking about perpendicular bisectors in various contexts in geometry. But they were just making observations and working on some simple proofs. Last night in Geometry, students were tasked with the following: It turns out that #3 is impossible, and #4 is possible with some […]
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College Algebra, reviewing the graphs of polynomial functions.  Each student has a whiteboard.  We started with y=(x+2)(x-3) for simplicity. Me:  What do we know about this graph? Student(s): It has x-intercepts at -2 and 3 (or something along those lines) Me:  What else do we know? Student(s):  It’s a parabola (or some version of that) Me: […]
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Two words for you:Tiny. Post-Its.
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As a continuation of my previous post on our CBL project, the students have finished their introduction video! Here is the Google Drive link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9op0nRdQxB4b19FSHh5Q2x5Z1k/view?usp=sharing We have now moved into our guiding questions to focus each project and get a timeline nailed down for the solutions! They have also been filming reflection clips as we […]
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Se pensate che le app educative per iPad debbano parlare solo inglese, allora non conoscete Schoolapp, una nuova società made in Italy fondata da Pierluigi Cappadonia e Cristian Molon, il cui primo prodotto è stato Schoolapp Abaco, una rivisitazione videogiocata del tradizionalissimo, ma immortale, abaco.  Il 10 agosto 2014, invece, Schoolapp ha reso disponibile su iTunes il download gratuito di Contare, l'app che insegna ai bambini in età prescolare a riconoscere i numeri naturali […]
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Two open source textbook authors that many in this group are familiar with sent me announcements recently (see below).  Looks like the folks at Simon Frasier are seeing if there is a viable business in offering print-on-demand versions of popular open source texts.  They've branded the effort BCCampus.From David Guichard:The BC Open Textbook Project is offering print copies of the book (Calculus, Guichard et al) in color […]
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Want to find out about each of these (and more)? Just click and read.Sample Schedules for Online TestingPre-identification for Spring 2015 AssessmentsRequest for Paper/Pencil AdministrationKindergarten Entry Assessment (KEA)Technology Readiness Information
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Something I learned today was _____ (be specific! An answer of math is too general)   _____ was similar to the lesson yesterday because _____ (write a couple of sentences explaining how they are)   Today’s reflection questions for students is all about how they perceive my lessons.  It is a check to make sure […]
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Formula Fishing Math Misery: It’s a lot easier to just keep randomly trying formulas than to actually think about the problem.
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How mathematicians are aiding fight against epidemics like Ebola: Ben Adams: At the sharp end of the fight against Ebola and other infectious diseases are courageous people who work tirelessly in difficult conditions. Equations are not included as standard in medical kits. But in the backrooms of universities and institutes mathematicians are also contributing to the lines of defence. [source: mme rss]