Carpentry

  As you know, I am always looking for ways to include real life math in my classroom.  Usually, I manage a project in Geometry but not in my other classes.  So I checked out sites for learning the math involved in carpentry.

My school used to offer carpentry but when the teacher retired, they didn't bother replacing him.  That is unfortunate.  So I needed to check and see where I could find information so I might create a unit for my pre-algebra class and maybe even my algebra class.

One of the first sites I found offers some great carpentry math. This looks at the slope or pitch of roofs.  The author relates rise and run to the pitch, to trigonometry and to the Pythagorean theorem.  This is so cool because the relationships are shown and it changes the math from being taught in a void to showing them good applications.  In addition, the entry includes quite a few formulas associated with roofing and writes many of them so they are related to previous formulas. 

The Carpentry Pro-Framer site has some really great information on the math carpenters use.   The author talks about easy ways to add or subtract measurements, figuring out how long joists should be, squaring various parts of a building,  or  locating windows or doors.

It is important to provide some practice problems so students are able to apply the math.  I found this online pdf filled with carpentry problems. I find the word problems the most exciting because you are more likely going to encounter a word type problem in the industry rather than just a list of numbers ready to go.  The word problems also require students to interpret drawings.

I found a site with a 4.5 min video where a carpenter explains how math is used.   The video could easily be used to introduce the topic and covers measurement, fractions, decimals and percents.  The way the pdf is structured, problems could easily be integrated into regular assignments so you don't have to take extra time to incorporate it.

Stop Motion or Slow Motion.

  In geometry, we started doing transformations.  We are spending time watching videos, doing worksheets and all the usual activities.  I thought about having students do a comic strip on transformations but then I realized this is a perfect topic for animation, or stop motion or slow motion. 

Since transformations are all abut moving objects or shapes around, creating a movie of some sort is a perfect activity for this.  I have an inservice Thursday and Friday of this week, so I could create a couple short videos of my own to demonstrate what could be done.  Most of my students need to see examples of completed work so they know what the final product might look like.

I love finding activities to use in my classes that allow the artist in my students emerge to create.  In my Algebra I class, I plan to have students draw pictures and label the slope on each part.  This shows them that slope can be found everywhere. 

I think I"ll have the students go outside, take pictures of the play ground, the hills, houses, satellite dishes, boats, gas storage containers,  and other places around town.  They can then mark the photo's up, showing the slope just as I did in the picture.  I think they need to see how math is found in real life.    They could even find pictures on the web and mark in the slope.  After all, math is all around us.