Warm-up

The height of the cup is 4 inches while the diameter is 1.5 inches.  What is the volume of the cup?

 

Warm-up

 

The semi-circle has a diameter of 10 feet.  What is the area of the window?

Cool Series

I seldom write about books, especially fictional books but I stumbled across a series I fell in love with.  The author, Julie Moffett created a heroine I can absolutely relate to.  She wrote the Lexi Carmichael Mystery Series.   

Lexi Carmichael is twenty five years old with a degree in mathematics and computer science.  She works for the NSA but prior to that she did some hacking until she got caught.

When it comes to social situations, she has no idea how to relate.  She'd rather be on her computer, doing her thing than try to interact with normal people.  She has three best friends, one is female who helps her navigate normal society while the other two are guys who used to work for the NSA but left to work in the private sector and are more geeky and hacker like than her.

Lexi ends up involved in mysteries where she has no idea what is going on at the beginning but ends up using her math and computer skills to solve it.  Being into math myself, I follow the logic and knowing something about computers, I understand the talk.  I feel as if she is someone I could be friends with and hang out with.  

Aside from the three best friends, she ends up working for a former MI-6 agent who left there to start his own company with one of the original hackers after working for the NSA.  When things get dicey and she needs additional help, she brings in the other two guys because they are considered the absolute best of the best when it comes to hacking.  These guys are twins and they work may be a bit more socially inept than her.  The last main character is an Italian guy, Slash,  who works for NSA and apparently used to work for the Vatican in computers.  He is also a hacker, carries a gun, and ends up protecting her.

There are currently 12 books in the series.  I am on book number three where she ends up helping Slash find out who broke into the Vatican coffers to steal a bunch of money and frame his uncle.  Unfortunately, the person who installed the gate way is found dead, someone tries to sedate and kidnap Lexi, and Lexi managed to find three encrypted files that lead them to the instigator and the actual crime. 

I'm always on the lookout for books I can recommend to my female students to read.  Books the have a female protagonist rather than a male. Books that might encourage them to think of going into math, science, or computers.  Honestly, I relate to Lexi when it comes to preferring to hang out on computers rather than trying to read those signals put out by society.  

I also admit to enjoying it when the character begins to think about statistics, number patterns, and such.  It's also nice when Lexi's best friend often asks everyone to speak in English because she doesn't understand Geek Speak.  I felt that way in high school when I was around other girls.  I didn't relate to the whole dating thing.  I didn't know how to wear make-up, fix my hair, or even manage to look totally put together.  Reading that Lexi feels weird when dressed up and doesn't feel outside of her normal jeans and t-shirt, makes me feel like I'm not that weird. 

Amazon had the first volume with the first four books on sale and I purchased them.  I started reading and I'm hooked.  I will probably work my way through all 12 volumes because I want to see what the next situation she'll end up in and what skills both math and computer she'll use.  Check it out, enjoy, and next week, I'll be back to normal topics.  Thank you for letting me share a series with you.  Let me now what you think, I'd love to hear.  

I Did It!

Due to the uncertain times, I'm having to create lesson plans for everything from being totally open with all students in the classroom to being on red and having to teach via distance.   Everything I plan, I do it with the possibility of circumstances changing over night.

Right now, we are on a modified schedule of half the school attends Monday and Tuesday, while the other half comes on Wednesday and Thursday.  Friday is our day for deep cleaning but next week, all students will come to school from 9:00 am to 1:30 pm so we have time at the end of the day to deep clean.  The first week in October, we'll be going full days with all the students but that could change if we get any more cases in town.

With everything the way it is, I've put some serious consideration into how I'm going to do things this year.  I've set up google classroom for all my classes and the one thing I've done for the first time, is to begin creating my own videos for students.  I am not recording the whole lecture.  Instead, I am making short to the point videos lasting no more than 10 minutes.

The other night, I made three, one for Algebra I, one for Algebra II, and one for my Pre-calculus class. Each video covers the material so they can see how to do the work.  They were really easy to make.  I used my iPad Pro, Apple Pencil, and my copy of Stage Pro.   Stage Pro is an app put out by Belkin and it turns your iPad into a document camera or allows you to record videos. 

I will tell you that it costs to buy but they do have a free version.  I have both but use the pro version because it has everything.  It allows me to set a plan background and record myself as if I am doing a lecture on a white board or I can put plane graph paper or graph paper with the traditional X, Y coordinate system.  In addition, I can bring in a photo of a problem I've done a head of time and write over it like I might do if I were showing students how to find an error.  I also have my choice of fine line aka college ruled or large ruled paper to use as a background if I have trouble writing in straight lines.  There are maps offered but I focused on the things I prefer using.

The app offers a choice of 8 ink colors tow write with and a pen with a choice of four thicknesses that resembler everything from a pen or pencil to a thick marker and three choices of an eraser.  If you are not great at basic shapes such as triangles, squares, or circles, the app offers you these shapes. You can enlarge the shapes to create a colored background.  I can type information or add sticky notes or labels to the product so as to show what is important or show steps.  There is even a choice for making your own labels. 

I had fun using the app to create videos.  It was easy to start and pause the recording as I filmed myself.  I could stop the video, change the background such as going from a graph to a whiteboard and then start recording again.  The button showing the time, is the pause button while the original record button starts and stops the buttons.

Although it saves the videos on the iPad, it was easy to upload them to google drive and from there one can place the videos into google classroom.  I can also provide each student with a link so they can download all videos from google drive.  Furthermore, the district is working on arranging for students to be able to take computers home so they can download all information and work to the computers so they do not have to rely on internet.  

Out in rural Alaska, internet is not the most reliable thing and many families cannot afford it due to the cost so allowing students to download videos and assignments means they can work at home but if we go to red, the school has ordered a bunch of thumb drives that teachers can download the info to and the thumb drives can be picked up by the student or their parents when they pick up lunch.  

I am proud of myself because I finally started making videos.  I plan to make videos for every lesson so students can keep up.  This all works for students whose families end up on quarantine on a regular basis.  Before you assume, we have parents and students who have to travel due to their jobs or due to medical so when they return, they and the whole family have to undergo a 14 day quarantine.  These videos allow students to stay up with all work while being quarantined.  

Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  

Conversation Response Starters.

 

It is easy to find conversation starters but not as easy to find responses.  In addition, many students have difficulty responding to a conversation starter.  Often students need help learning both to start and respond to create a better conversation. I say better conversation because many students have the "I got 3x +2." and "I got that too." so they've had it and it's over.  In reality this does not help students learn to talk about math to any depth.

There are certain techniques to help students learn to carry out better conversations.  What ever techniques a teacher decides to use, it is important that it include something for the other student to use to help respond with something other than  yes or no. 

I once participated in training to do improvisational theater.  The biggest rule for improvisational is to never, never, never do anything to get a "no" because the no stops everything cold.  One thing we did was a "Yes and......." where we said "Yes and..........." and filled in something so the other person could say yes and something.  This could be used in math like this:

Student 1 - "I got the answer 14."  Student 2 - "Yes I got that and I did it by adding 3 to both sides." Student 1 - "Yes I did that too and when I did it, I eliminated the constant" etc.  This is not something you want to start out with.

One way to encourage this is to pass out partner discussion cards in which there is a starter prompt and a response prompt to get the full conversation going.  These cards all have a starter question with a response prompt and are based more on general strategies rather such as "What strategy could you use to solve the problem?" and "I could have used......" or "How do you know your answer is reasonable?"  I know it is reasonable because......."

Although there are several sites with cards ready for purchase, it isn't that difficult to surf the internet finding examples for you to make your own.  If you want to make your own, remember to think about asking students to discuss strategies or give explanations so the discussion begins with a "What", "Why", or "How."  Just remember that these cards fall into one of four categories.  The first is "Making sense of problems and persevere" with questions such as "What strategy did you use?" or "How would you explain your strategy to others?".

The second is "Reason, Explain, and Critique" which asks things like "How did you get your answer?" or "How can you be sure your answer is right?".  Next is "Reflect and connect" with questions like "What is the relationship between ________ and _________", or "What skills or concepts did you use?".  Finally is the "Sentence Starters" such as "The strategy that makes the most sense to me is........" or "I was really surprised when........".

The nice thing about these partner discussion cards is that they can be used via distance learning through the use of breakout rooms or in math journals.  This type of activity does not have to be used only in a regular class. Furthermore, why not have some of these questions on a Poster that is hung on the wall so students can easily look up and check for a conversation starter starter or response. 

In regard to posters, I found this on the internet with some great suggestions for conversation starters and responses that go with four main areas.  One is "Clarify the problem and ideas for solving it." which asks "What are we trying to do?" or "In future problems like this we need to remember to ......".  Another is "Discuss representations and models" with questions like "How can we explain this to others?" or "Another way to show this is.........".  Next is "Explain and support reasoning." asking "What does that mean?" or "In math we always need to ........".  Last is "Use multiple methods of solving." with questions like "How can we solve it with symbols?" or "I think these two methods relate because......."  

The poster with these questions can easily be printed out and hung on the wall where students can refer to it or check it out or make copies for every student so they can put it in their notebook to refer to during conversations.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.

Warm-up

If four coconuts produce 50 ml of oil, how many coconuts do you need for 625 ml of oil.

Warm-up

If it takes 20 avocados to produce 250 ml of oil, how many avocados do you need to produce 825 ml of oil?