I See Math!

I finally sat down to read "Hacking Mathematics - 10 problems that need solving" by Denis Sheeran.  The first idea is one I love but I have limitations due to where I live but he provides a solution and I found a place on the internet to help.

He recommends changing  the usual bell ringer out every so often for an "I See Math" activity.  It is composed of three slides.

The first slide is the title, the second has the intriguing picture and the third contains some sort of question to get them going.  The picture he used had multiple sized cups of iced coffee and hot coffee complete with prices.  The students had to decide a way to answer his question of which size is the best. 

He said students discovered they could not use a unit price to determine the best buy because some students wondered about the ratio of ice to coffee in the iced version.  Did that decrease the actual amount of the liquid in the cup vs the hot coffee which might be filled with only coffee.

I love the idea but out here, we do not have that many choices for finding these types of opportunities.  We have one real place for picking up coffee in the village and that is at the school cafeteria which has a large pot of coffee available by eight in the morning.  In addition, the stores do not always have the per unit price available for an item but you are often lucky to find two items to compare.

Fortunately for me, Alice Keeler has a blog entry explaining how to do this and a link to a file with at least 36 - 'I See Math' activities.  The activities cover so many different topics that you could do one a week for the whole school year and not run out.

I love that there is the file so I can use them and get an idea of how to put them together so  I can develop my own.  I always take pictures in the summer on my trips which I might be able to use to create some of these.  I only need one interesting photo attached to a question which will trigger discussion.

One of the best things I see about this particular exercise is aside from showing real world connections, it generates student discussion and questions which is needed.  I plan to try this on Tuesday morning with all my students.  Thank you Denis and Alice for this wonderful idea.

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.