One more gold tidbit.

I found out that the price of gold dropped from 1304.40 to 1290.95.  This lead to a question on why the price changed.  I also ended up looking up gold bullion in bars.  I discovered that the US govt has declared the gold bar to be : 7 inches x 3 and 5/8 inches x 1 and 3/4 inches and weighs around 27.5 lbs.  This means that although the bars are rather small, they are actually quite heavy.  Since we are heading into state mandated testing next week, I will not be doing as much actually teaching so I will be posting some real life ideas for warm-ups and plan which apps I still need to try out.  I have a couple but between now and mid may, the students will actually not get quite as much done because it is beautiful and spring.

Problems on gold

Due to parent teacher conferences, we are having 40 min classes today so rather plan too much, I concentrated on the warm-up.  It turns out Alaska produces a decent amount of gold from several mines within the state. I learned that gold production went from 800,000 to 954,000 troy ounces between 2008 and 2013.  The price of cold on 3/26/14 was 1304.40 per troy ounce.  I also learned that it costs $555 to produce one troy ounce of gold.  The total US production is 7,426,822 troy ounces.  Finally 32.15 troy ounces = 1 kg. 
Today I asked
1. What was the percent increase in production between 2008 and 2013?
2. What is the percent of gross profit per troy ounce?
3. What percent of the total US Gold production does Alaska account for. 
My students are actually finding these interesting because there is a Gold mine, not too far from here and they hire local population.  They did note that although oil production is decreasing, gold production is increasing. 
Tomorrow I think I"ll be asking questions like
1. How many pounds of gold did Alaska produce in 2013?
2. How many pounds of gold the is US produce in 2013?
3. How much did the price of gold change from the 26th to the 27th of March?  Give the answer in both dollar and percent.

Warm-up

Today for a change of pace, I gave students 4 dice and asked them to find a certain number. Some classes I placed restrictions and others I did not.  When there was no restriction, the students found the number fairly quickly and often used repeated numbers.  For instance they might use the number 4 many times.  When I placed a restriction on the number of times they could use a certain number, it made it harder for students to reach the number.  In one class, where I incorporated the restrictions, about half the students were unable to get the answer because they kept trying to use certain numbers 4 or 5 times.  In the rest of the classes with no restrictions, students found the number within two minutes.
I learned that adding restrictions make the activity harder to do.  I think next week, I am going to give them three dice and have them find a specific number using any operation to obtain a certain number.  They can do it intellectually but I want to see if they can do it with the dice.  It would make it more visual.

Exterior angle app lite.

Friday, I had the students use the geoboard app to find the number of total degrees in a regular polygon.  Yesterday, we took it a step further and I had the students take the information from Friday and divide each total by the number of side to find the individual interior angles.  Once they had that information for 3 to 9 sides, I had them find out what the exterior angle was for each angle and multiply it by the number of sides to find the total of the exterior angles.  Today we went through what they'd learn to create the formulas for individual interior and exterior angles.  It was awesome because they were able to verbalize the formulas and where the formulas came from. 
Today, I had them use the exterior angle lite app.  It began with a video, then had an exploration activity followed by a short 5 question assessment.  Several of my students did not like their scores so they retook the assessment and worked slowly and carefully to improve their overall scores. 
They have been totally involved in this section so far.
On the real world math front, I found some information on Alaska's production of crude oil.  I discovered that production decreased from 7.38 million barrels in 1988 to 1.92 M in 2012.  So Alaska's contribution to total US oil production dropped from 25% to 8%.  According to the internet, a barrel contains 42 US gallons of crude oil.  One barrel of crude oil produces 19 gallons of fuel for your car, truck, snowmachine or ATV.  Using the information, I had students calculate the percent decrease in production, what percent of a barrel of crude becomes gas and an estimate of total US oil production.  I pointed out to the students that we were doing some economic analysis and a few of them were so surprised. Tomorrow, we will check out gold.

Math toons app Logarithms + real world

The Math tons app on Logarithms differs from most of its other apps because it teaches the students something about logs using the mnemonics Be Happy and Bacon and Eggs to help the students learn about logs.  My students enjoyed using the app and said they learned something new.  It is not much but the characters who teach it are loggers who help the students see the process.  They do get some practice problems but not as many as in the other apps  I think I would use this to help introduce the topics of logs.
Todays real world problem was fun.  I discovered that about 56.9% of the cigarettes sold in NYC, are sold illegally.  This is because the price of cigarettes in NYC are $14.50 per pack and this includes a $5.85 tax.  In July, NYC sold about 15, 630,000 packs of cigarettes.  I had the students calculate the number of packs sold illegally, the percent of the cost that was actually tax and how much revenue was lost in a month.  For my students it was quite eye opening.  I am having fun finding these problems.

Geoboard app and other items.

In geometry, I passed out a worksheet that has the students physically draw a quadrilateral, pentagon, hexagon, etc  and then draw line segments out form one vertex to others to create triangles inside the figure. Today, I took the same worksheet and had the students do this on the Geoboard app.  My high schoolers really had a great time working on this. They did get a bit frustrated when they got to 7, 8 or 9 sides however no one rushed to finish this.  On Monday, I am going to have the students add a chart to the back of  the paper for total degrees, each interior angle and a column for exterior angles, the number and their measure.  We will be using the Geoboard app and this way I hope they have as much finding the answer to the questions for each shape that they still have to answer.  Most of the questions deal with the idea that if you change the size of the figure, the number of triangles will not change.
Today I showed the students the yahoo video about the college aged girl who ended up being charged a total of 787.33 for her cab ride of 2 miles.  Then they answered three math questions such as how much was she charged per miles, how much was the tip and What is your opinion of the whole event.  They have requested I provide more of these types of warm-ups.  This is great that I've got their interest.

Good Warm-up and started using Mathtoons apps.

Today I started class reminding the students about the dog bought in china a couple days ago for 12 million yen or 1.9 million dollars.  Then I asked the students to find the exchange rate for $1 US.  First thing half the students did was to go to the internet and find some currency exchange and came up with all sorts of answers.  I pointed out they had 12M yen and $1.9M so they had everything they needed.  It took a bit but they got the problem set up.  Then I asked how much the guy paid per pound if the dog weighed 200lbs which is the average weight for a Tibetan Mastiff.  At $9500 per pound, they thought it was a bit excessive.  What really took things home was when they figured an approximate volume based on some average info I was able to find and discovered he paid about $35 per cubic inch.  The conclusion was that you could do better things with your money......LOL.
I downloaded a bunch of Mathtoon apps today so I assigned one app to each period and had them start working through the quizzes and very few students scored well on material they should have known. 
My state test prep class, I gave number skills to and they had trouble with just adding positive and negative numbers.  Per 2 got to do the intermediate algebra part of the advanced algebra app.  Some struggled with it.  Per 3 did logs and it was not as much a quiz as a lesson and the students gained better understanding of logs using this app.  Per 4 tried geometry pro whose first quiz had them working with angles.  Per 6 did the first quiz in number equations and most students ended up between 2 and 7 right out of 10.  These apps are helping provide some formative data to help me understand where my students have gaps in their mathematical skills.  I am going to work them through all the quizzes and materials before I move them to another app.  I should probably have period 2 do the exponents app because we are just starting to work with polynomials.