background preloader

Maths Inquiry Projects

Facebook Twitter

Making Maths Meaningful with Scratch. We know that students learn best when content is meaningful and has a direct connection and application to their lives. However, while some maths concepts, such as telling the time or using money, can have immediate relevance, others seem to have very little application to children’s daily lives. How often will 11 year old children really need to measure the size of angles, or work with cartesian graphs? I’ve found that teaching children to code may be part of the answer. This year, I’ve been teaching students in Years 2-6 to create simple arcade games using Scratch. In order for my students to be successful, they’ve been required to apply some core mathematical ideas that I’ve struggled to find a relevant use for in the past. 1.

It is almost impossible to do anything in Scratch without using X and Y coordinates. Cartesian coordinates are required in this simple script to command an object to move to a specific location: 2. The background stage in Scratch is a basic XY grid. 3. 4. Opinionator.blogs.nytimes. Classroom Discussions: Using Math Talk to Help Students Learn, Grades K-6 - Suzanne H. Chapin, Catherine O'Connor, Mary Catherine O'Connor, Nancy Canavan Anderson - Google Books. Math Talk | Math Solutions. Math Talk provides students an opportunity for deeper understanding through communication. Individually or in groups, students articulate and defend their ideas and analyze the reasoning of others.

Teachers will gain the ability to assess student knowledge through asking “good questions,” and align instruction to ensure each student understands how to use math skills through thinking, talking, and doing. Why Math Talk™? Five Major Reasons That Talk Is Critical to Teaching and Learning Talk can reveal understanding and misunderstanding.Talk supports robust learning by boosting memory.Talk supports deeper reasoning.Talk supports language development.Talk supports development of social skills. Using communication in the classroom to represent, explain, justify, agree, and disagree shapes the way students learn mathematics. Classroom dialogue engages students, encourages them to learn more, and allows for the exploration of ideas, strategies, procedures, facts, and more.

Learn More Learn More. Installing the OneNote Class Notebook App: A Guide for IT Administrators in Schools. The OneNote Class Notebook app is an app for OneDrive for Business that helps teachers set up OneNote for their classes. This app creates a class notebook, which includes three types of sub-notebooks: Student Notebooks – private notebooks that are shared between each teacher and their individual students. Teachers can access these notebooks at any time, but students cannot see other students’ notebooks. Content Library – a notebook for teachers to share course materials with students. Teachers can add and edit its materials, but for students, the notebook is read-only.

What you'll need IMPORTANT: Please be sure to install this important public update for all OneNote 2013 desktop clients in your school: Note Learn how your teachers can get started with the OneNote Class Notebook app after it's installed. What you can expect Follow the steps below to install the OneNote Class Notebook app from the Office Store. Feedback and questions? Investigating Epidemics. Why do epidemics take off? Why don't they just carry on for ever once they've started? These simple models will help us to understand what's going on, and how science can help us to prevent epidemics happening in the first place. Standing Disease Equipment required: people - lots of them!

Start with everyone sitting down.The first person to be infected with Standing Disease stands up - choose someone. Questions to consider: How many people in the room? Network Disease Equipment required: people, each with a slip of paper and a pen/pencil, plus optional counters and string Before the epidemic starts, everyone should write the names of two people on their piece of paper without discussing their choices.Everyone stands up.Choose one person to start. How many steps did the epidemic run for this time? Counter Plague Equipment required: one die and about 20-30 counters per small group (any colour) Choose either the blue or red die on the right. Does the epidemic take off or die out? 0-941355-57-8_L2.pdf. 978-1-935099-01-7_L.pdf. Classroom Lessons | Math Solutions.

Classroom Examples: Middle School: Math. Numbers. Math Projects. Projects will be worth a maximum of 50 points! Each project will be rated on its own merits based on the requirements detailed above. The grade will ultimately be determined by the teacher according to the following chart. Creativity is a measure of originality. The difficulty rating is based on the type of project that is chosen. Math content is a value determined by the amount of subject matter that is within the project. For example, let's say Peter Pan sings a song for his project: writes instead of types the lyrics, which contain creative versus that explains how to vaguely solve an equation, and then sings the song flawlessly in front of the class. On the other hand, George Grimly creates a well-worded puzzle without presenting it to the class but has the printed copy enlarged at a professional studio.

The Laws of Maths - The Commutative Law. We have started our year inquiring into "How the World Works", looking at how a knowledge of the laws of science helps us to understand the world in which we live.And, of course, a knowledge of the Laws of Mathematics is central to this understanding.So, we started with the Commutative Law. With this provocation, I wanted to see what the kids knew about addition, the relationship between addends and how the Commutative Law works.So I asked them to show that this statement was true using 3 different methods. This was the first time I had done something like this with the kids this year. It was probably the first time some of them had ever done "proofs" or tried to explain their ideas using multiple strategies.Here is what they came up with: Coloured counters are used here to represent the Tens and Units columns, an unusual way to show place value.

It doesn't really answer the question for me and tells me I need to spend some more time exploring how we can represent numbers. The Laws of Maths - The Commutative Law.