Saturday, April 28, 2012

Summer Math Ideas

In Houston, the thermometer is already pushing 90 and it's beginning to feel a lot like summer.  I love the blog Mind Shift and first read this NY Times blog article on that site.  These are great ideas for summer OR sparks for ideas using current events during the year, especially after testing.  Enjoy!

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/these-days-are-numbered-eight-summer-math-ideas/

Thursday, April 5, 2012

How Would You (or your class) Draw This?

David weighed 240 pounds on Earth and 40 pounds on the moon. How much would Steven weigh on the moon if he weighs 180 pounds on Earth?


This problem was presented to an 8th grade class.  I think model drawing makes it much more accessible to students in a lower grade.  Here's how I solved it!  

Sunday, April 1, 2012

A Model Drawing Schedule

Model Drawing, also called Bar Modeling, is the most commonly used problem solving strategy in Singapore Math.  Our students struggled with it in the beginning.  When we reflected on our teaching, we decided they needed more practice with one model before we moved on.  This is a sample of what our schedule looked liked as our students became more successful.  I mention in this video that we wrote 10 versions of each problem.  In a two-week span, we used 6-7 of them.  The rest were saved to be review problems other weeks.