Pi Day Review

This was a crazy busy week: preparing for Pi Day, executing Pi Day activities, and then some family happenings. Overall it was a great week!

I thought I'd briefly share how well my Pi Day activities. I was strongly motivated to make a 3Act lesson (a la Dan Meyer). Well, I didn't make just one, I made two. Let me tell you, the response from my students was overwhelmingly positive and engaging. Furthermore, I invited my administration to check out the lessons and they were highly engaged and excited to see what was going on in my math class.

Activity 1: Filling a cylindrical vase with water. Water Vase - Act 1 can be found here.
I did this lesson with 4 classes. The students asked great questions after the first act and on we went to answer the question: How long will it take to fill the vase with water? Act 2 helped give necessary information via video and my Promethean Flipchart. Act 3 revealed the time/solution and we were close (4 second discrepancy).  The best part: our discussion throughout the lesson and most importantly, at the end?
I asked my class:

• What could have caused inaccuracy or inconsistency with your calculated answer and the practical answer?

The discussion that ensued was not only flattering, but very telling that students enjoy discussing errors, conflicts, mistakes, and of course the thrill of being really close to the answer.

Activity 2: Filling a cylindrical vase with scoops of sand. Sand Vase - Act 1 can be found here.

I did this lesson with two classes and was just as engaging and discussion based as the other activity. Act 3 reveals that there is a 2 scoop discrepancy between our calculated answer and practical answer. Again, the discussion that followed by asking the same above question was very stimulating. 

I'm so excited to do more 3Act learning this year and spend time over the summer preparing for next year. 

If you want any of the Promethean flipcharts, PDFs, PowerPoints, to accompany the videos, email me.

Pi,

3.14159265...

Graphic Organizer that went along with the lesson:

The Law of Lego

I went to the Lego Store in my local mall the other day. There weren't many people in the store so I was able to take a picture of their back wall full of bins with those little magical plastic pieces. I don't know about you, but quite a few questions popped into my head:

1. How many Legos are in all those bins?
2. How many pieces could I fit in the quart-sized cup for $14.99 ($15)
3. If I worked there would I be allowed to build anything I wanted?
4. Given an hour, what could I build?
5. Am I dreaming?
6. Is this a tease?
7. ...and so on, you get the idea

Most importantly, I left the store with what I think was the best question:

How can I incorporate Legos into my classroom to have an awesome learning experience and lesson?

There's my new objective, especially with surface area and volume coming up in my Geometry class.

What question comes to mind for you?

Best,
15

Can negative answers equal stealing?

If someone gets a negative answer to a question involving a purchase at a store, is it stealing?

Today, I was grading the tests I gave last week covering linear systems in Algebra. I was actually quite impressed with the majority of students who were successfully solving the mixture, distant, and linear systems questions. Then I came across an answer where the student answered with a negative value to the following question:

Mr. Stadel bought a total of 31 Red Bull drinks. Each individual can is priced at $2 and a 4-pack of Red Bull drinks is priced at $7. Mr. Stadel paid a total of $56 for the energy drinks. How many individual cans did he purchase? How many 4-packs did he purchase?

The student answered -6 for the amount of 4-packs. Checking their work, they accidentally forgot to account for a negative in their solving. Of course this prompts me to encourage my students to analyze their answers even better, considering the practicality of their answer before submitting it...

or maybe -6 meant I stole the Red Bulls.

Best,
-6