Jumbo and mini STOP signs

Friday was the beginning of my spring break!!!
I took my new tripod, measuring tape, and camera assistant (my 22-month old son) with me to stage a few pictures.
Objective: shoot different sized STOP signs found on the road to his Gymboree classes.

*can be found at 101qs.com

I've been itching to do this math shoot for weeks, but have been busy with school and other miscellaneous things. Ironically, I found these STOP signs to serve two purposes:

1. I'll be exploring the area of regular polygons with my geometry class when we return from spring break; exploring the apothem, radius, and eventually using these properties for surface area and volume of solids. 
2. The signs are telling me to STOP, collaborate and listen (sorry, Vanilla Ice). Seriously, I need to:

• STOP and rethink a few key components to a successful learning environment for my math students. 
• Collaborate with my teaching counterparts, online and off, and 
• Listen to the needs of my students, common core standards, technology, the future, and...

I'm working on a vision I had last week regarding the reconstruction of my classroom, how students will come to my class to learn, and the overall learning experience(hint). Stay tuned!

Best,

1,254

Infographics

I want to investigate Infographics.

Are you using them? If you are, how? What's effective about them? Do they help create discussion in your class? Do they create 'perplexity' as Dan Meyer would want. From the little I have seen of infographics tonight, I see some strong potential, especially with 3Acts and discussion based learning.

One of my RSS feeds, Mr. G Online was talking about Infographics and I thought I'd see if there's any gems. I clicked on Cool Infographics, immediately finding a picture of an iPad and usage. Continuously trying to better train my brain to look for potential math lessons, I quickly:

1. Snagged the graphic
2. Added some lovely black boxes and...
3. Poof! A potential math lesson? 
4. Uploaded link to 101qs.com

What's the first question that comes to mind?

Is your question, "What percentage is each activity on the iPad?"
Additionally, I want to know if each colored area actually represents that percentage of the iPad screen?

Off to explore some infographics.

Best,
12% (that's one of the percentages)

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: