The Ripple Effect
learning with and from each other
Archive for Math
We’ve had our iPods up and running for a few months now and it’s about time we shared some of our experiences with them. A little while back, I wrote about our initial plans for using them around literacy, which focused on comprehension strategies that are often reserved for teaching students to be better readers. We didn’t want to limit ourselves to reading though, so we expanded them to help us better understand the world through what we see, hear, and experience. Hopefully, our video helps explain the rest. We always love to hear feedback or if you have any questions, we’d love to try to answer them!
March 1, 2010 is World Math Day! This is a global event that has been held every year since 2007 to unite students, classrooms, and teachers with other individuals around the world through the joy of math and numbers.
Even though it is technically scheduled for March 1st, the activities are open to participants for as long as it is March 1st somewhere in the world. Since we are in the western hemisphere, we are one of the last locations in the world to greet the first day of March, so we actually began World Math Day today. Now if the behaviour of the Ripplers who participated in it today is an accurate measurement of fun and success, then I think we may be on to something “big” and we will continue until midnight tomorrow night. Students
Everyone in our class is trying to complete a minimum of 60 games. That equals 60 minutes of mental math questions. Ultimately, we’re hoping to complete 100 to maximize our point accumulation and since students can visit the World Math Day site at school, on our iPods, or at home, there are many opportunities available to help us achieve this.
Also, an overall goal for this event is to set a newworld record for the most number of questions answered in a single event. A new Guiness World Record was set during last year’s event with almost 500,000,000 questions answered then. I wonder what the total number will be this year?
Division 2, I’m curious to know your thoughts about participating in this global math event. Please share them in your comments to this post.
That’s right everyone. ANGLES ATTACKED ANIMOTO, and our class thought that if we were going to see angles everywhere that we would help others to identify and measure angles by sharing their learning processes. Please check out each students’ angle posts as they should all be up in the New Year.
Wow! What an adventure I, Ms. Rogerson, was able to have with Mrs. Braidwood’s Ripplers! I must admit that my last two weeks with them really opened my mind up not only to angles in our everyday lives, but also to a really important tip: When new learning comes our way and it challenges us…have patience, connect it with something you know, work through it, have more patience and don’t give up! Thank you Ripplers and the rest of the blogging community for joining us on this angle adventure.
How would you use Animoto to share your learning? Do you have a post that includes an Animoto video?
Most of the Ripplers have been able to showcase their new angle knowledge on their blogs this week. Whether they like it or not, they’re seeing angles everywhere now! To show what they have learned so far, with Ms. Rogerson, each student wrote about their individual understanding of angles and created an animoto video based on their collective knowledge in small groups. Aiden, Jennifer, Allie, and Liam have great descriptions of their learning process and are definitely worth checking out. A few groups are still finishing up their last minute video details, but most have theirs embedded and the missing ones will all be sorted out when we return to class in 2 weeks.
WARNING: If you don’t see angles everywhere yet…this post will really open your minds to a world of angles you have never seen before! Ms. Rogerson here to give you one last update on our angle adventures. As you may have heard the Ripplers have been working very hard to identify and measure angles not only in and around our school environment, but also in other areas of interest like sports. The following videos also show us that angles really do have ATTITUDE! The first two videos are hosted in YouTube, so I apologize if you are unable to view them from school.
What angles do you see in gymnastics events?
What rotations do you see in snowboarding tricks?
What angles and rotations do you see as Danny MacAskill makes his way back home on his BMX?
Where do you see angles and rotations in your life and surrounding environments?
Alright everyone I, Ms. Rogerson, am back at it again! Have you ever been so wrapped up in a new concept that it follows you around? Well, I must admit that after teaching geometry for the past week I see angles everywhere. Not only do I see them in my everyday environment, but I have also begun to dream about them. Don’t get me wrong I love geometry and I especially love trying new, fun and interactive ways of discovering and learning new material with students.
This past week we have had the opportunity to deepen our learning about angles and measurements through exploring shapes and identifying angles with ‘Hinged Reflective Mirrors’, and by using the Smart Board for online interactive games such as Alien Angles and Measuring Angles with a Protractor. These games are very fun and they get you out of your seat. TIP: Try answering the questions on your own or ask a class member for assistance.
Once students practiced identifying and estimating the measurements of acute and obtuse angles by using right, straight, and full rotations as reference angles, students were sent in groups of four with their digital cameras into the hallways and out onto the playground. They were on a mission to locate, identify and take pictures of each angle within their everyday environment. Now please understand that this took a lot of dedication and hard work as it was freezing cold outside, and I believe that there was still some snow on the ground. Have you ever taken pictures of angles in your environment? Well let me tell you! Angles of all different shapes and sizes are found everywhere; angles are the structure of the world around us and a part of our everyday activities.
Somewhere along the digital angle adventure students discovered that they could make angles with their bodies and began to take pictures to measure later on in the computer lab! Angles were found in doorways, lockers, playground equipment, classroom, body parts, paper holders, and MANY more places. Using Fireworks, a photo editing program, students drew, labeled and measured their angle pictures with protractors. To find out more about our angle adventures come back later this week to check out our students’ blogs as they will post about their experiences with angles, measurement and their learning along the way.
What fun games and activities have you used to learn about angles? Do you have some other interesting strategies/tips to make angles and measurement even more fun?
One of Ms. Rogerson’s first lessons with us was a math review integrated into a PE activity. Yes, you heard right, math and PE combined! It was a great activity filled with Bouncy Ball Madness because you see, that was the problem: an evil gnome (who has since learned the error of his ways) had unleashed the Bouncy Ball Madness virus in our gym and it was up to the students to contain it before it spread. Ms. Rogerson explained tearfully that the gnome, Bijou, had stowed away in her backpack that morning. Thankfully being the jack-of-all trades person that she is, she had previous exterminating experience, so within minutes we had a gym full of certified exterminators that could help eliminate the virus. Their job was difficult and tiring, but they all rose to the challenge.
Goal: eliminate as many small and large virus molecules as possible as a team from their side of the gym and prevent the other team from accumulating extermination points. Points equated fees charged for the extermination process.
Points: 1 point for small bouncy ball extermination pattern (floor-opposite wall-floor); 10 points for large bouncy ball extermination pattern (same as small ball)
After a time limit, students collected bouncy balls and returned them to receive additional points to add (small ones) or for a multiplier of 10 (big ones) on their individual or group scores. As the activity progressed, Ms. Rogerson added in variations that introduced each team to larger and larger numbers. After 4 rounds, students presented their extermination process to the other team to see which group had the most efficient exterminators, how many bonus points were collected, and whether totals were accurately calculated.
This fun and creative activity will definitely be part of Mrs. Braidwood’s collection from now on as well. The variations you can try with it are infinite! And you never know when more mischievous gnomes will appear … but of course if they do, we’ll be ready.
The results are in! Thank you to everyone who participated in our survey of super powers.
Altogether, data was collected from 93 people and in the end shape-shifting has proven to be the most desirable one. It was very interesting to see the results unfold as shape-shifting took a sizeable lead early on, but in the last week, invisibility made a valiant effort towards catching up.
With so many choosing shape-shifting as their super power choice, we’re very curious to find out why it was so popular! Was it because people imagined themselves changing into specific shapes or forms? Or did the appeal come from being able to shift into an infinite number of shapes?
Division 2, take another look at the bar graph above that displays the results of the data we collected. Think about the facts that you can ”see” within it. What can you infer from these results?
Our class is hungry for data! We have been collecting all sorts of it within our class and more recently from other classes within our school. We’ve learned all sorts of things about each other as well as how to infer conclusions from the data set.
Now, we’re interested in collecting data on a much wider scale, which leads us to the survey below. We’d be thrilled if you could take a moment to read through it and submit your choice. If you have a friend nearby, maybe you could ask them to complete it as well! The more the merrier. We’re very curious to see how much data we can collect from our visitors.
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