Number Bonds = Better Understanding [Rescued from my old blog.] A number bond is a mental picture of the relationship between a number and the parts that combine to make it. The concept of number bonds is very basic, an important foundation for understanding how numbers work. Number bonds let children see the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction. A Picture Is Worth More than Many Words You can draw number bonds on paper using circles or bar diagrams. Math textbooks often try to communicate the same concept using four-fact families. The idea of the four-fact family is to help students realize that once they know one of the facts in the family, they know all of them. How to Teach Number Bonds When you start teaching number bonds, use M&Ms or popsicle sticks or whatever you have on hand to make physical piles that can be pulled apart and pushed back together, then pulled apart in another way. “How many blocks do we have here?” Kitten counted carefully. “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.” She did not have to count those.
15 Apps for the One iPad Classroom Hooray! You have a brand new, shiny iPad to use in your classroom this year. Boo—there's only one iPad and 35 eager kids ready to use it. No need to worry—there are lots of amazing things you can do with a single iPad in your classroom, and it doesn't have to be a classroom management nightmare either. Here are 15 of our favorite apps that work great with a one iPad setup AND help to keep kids on task and engaged with what you are learning. No more squabbles: Use Stick Pick to help kids take turns. Looking for more iPad teaching help? What are your favorite apps for the one iPad classroom? Power Up: Apps for Kids with Special Needs and Learning Differences A fresh look at learning If your child has a special need or learning difference, you've come to the right place. Common Sense Media gets lots of requests for product recommendations from parents whose kids struggle with traditional learning. Some of their kids have a hard time with schoolwork; others have trouble staying on task or find it difficult to express their feelings. Our hope for you and your kids No matter which hurdles your kid faces, the apps and other media included in Power Up can give them an added boost. About the categories Apps are arranged by challenge area and difficulty level. We've done our homework Lots of work went into creating this guide. Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are conducted by expert reviewers and are not influenced by the creators or by our funders.
adele_b: @maggiev what do we want kids... Talking It Out: The New Conversation-centered Leadership, by Alan S. Berson and Richard G. Stieglitz Every year, hundreds of thousands of new graduates enter the business world, eager to climb the corporate ladder. Their progress on the early rungs of that journey will often be determined by qualities like hard work, determination, knowledge and technical proficiency. But business consultants Alan S. Berson and Richard G. Stieglitz argue that those same qualities prove less helpful at higher rungs on the ladder, and may even be one's downfall if they are not balanced by a very different set of leadership qualities. They sum up the thesis of their new book, Leadership Conversations: Challenging High-Potential Managers to Become Great Leaders, like this: "As you move into upper leadership levels, your technical skills -- what you know -- become less important. The importance of building strong working relationships within an organization may seem self-evident. A Changed Environment Leading vs. A central distinction in the book is that between leadership and management. Developing Leaders
Magic Squares Magic Squares date back over 4,000 years to ancient China and have existed throughout history and in many different parts of the world. The magic lies in the fact that when the numbers in each row, column, and main diagonals of the square are added together, the sum is always the same. These number puzzles have fascinated some of the world's most brilliant thinkers, including the eighteenth century American Benjamin Franklin. Magic Squares provide an engaging way to develop mental math skills. Books about Magic Squares Ben Franklin and the Magic Squares highlights Franklin's lifelong knack for inventions and chronicles his achievements as a publisher, scientist, writer, and patriot, as well as showing how he amused himself during meetings of the Pennsylvania Colonial Assembly by creating magic squares. Before Sudoku: The World of Magic Squares Fans of Sudoku may not know that it is a recent offshoot of the Magic Square. Return to Home Page
Shezza456: Tests don't measure everything... Susan Ann Darley: 12 Mind-blowing Benefits of Play -- Including at Work What do most Nobel Laureates, innovative entrepreneurs, artists and performers, well-adjusted children, happy couples and families, and the most successfully adapted mammals have in common? They play enthusiastically throughout their lives," says Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play. Just watch children stomping their feet in a muddy puddle of water or laughing uncontrollably, often where signs are posted to "Be Quiet." When's the last time you laughed so hard that tears ran down your face or your stomach muscles ached for hours? Unfortunately, somewhere along the way to "growing up" we often exchange play for work and seriousness can become a chronic habit. Research explains how play shapes our brains, creates competence and stabilizes our emotions. How about playing at work? Play is natural for humans and animals both domesticated and wild. In the parent-child relationship, recognizing a signal of an invitation to play is critical. Now what are you waiting for?
Math Thinking | Sharing thinking about math from students Math Thinking | Sharing thinking about math from students Imagine you numbered each note of a scale, and then played the mathematical sequences on the notes like they were music. What would 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,… sound like? What would it sound like if you automatically jumped back down an octave every time you passed a multiple of 7? You may find this tool useful for actually listening to the sequence of numbered notes you generate. What would the sequence of square numbers sound like? What would π sound like? Chris Hunter writes on his blog about a student explaining how they would express 0.500 using ten-frames: One student expressed this as 500/1000 and 0.500. Showing 500/1000 or 0.500 using ten-frames Have you seen examples where students come up with innovative ways of representing numbers? Screen-shot from one of the puzzles included in the block game. I wrote this puzzle/game last year with the hope it could be used to help generate some thinking about area, multiplication, and addition. Some specific things which students might model:
Love2Learn » Blog Archive » The Vitruvian Man – a context for learning Finding a quantity given a percentage (or fraction) is a useful skill yet considered to be an extension topic for year 8. I thought I could give it a go but set the scene, so-to-speak, without the oft-used context of shopping and sales. Enter the Vitruvian Man. Lesson Activity My ‘hook’ question to the class was “How do forensic scientists figure out the height of victims given minimal data?” I showed and explained the Vitruvian Man. Divide the class into pairs (or small groups).For each pair, give a card which showed one of the proportions (e.g. 1/4 of height = shoulder width) as well as a measuring tapeThey take the fractional measurement of their partner, i.e. the item to the right of the equation, e.g. shoulder widthDemonstrate how to calculate the height given a known percentage (or fraction); in my example, multiply each side of the equation by 4Finally, measure the actual height and compare to the calculated height Discussion points How do the actual and calculated height compare?
Seven Bridges of Königsberg Map of Königsberg in Euler's time showing the actual layout of the seven bridges, highlighting the river Pregel and the bridges The Seven Bridges of Königsberg is a historically notable problem in mathematics. Its negative resolution by Leonhard Euler in 1735 laid the foundations of graph theory and prefigured the idea of topology. The city of Königsberg in Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia) was set on both sides of the Pregel River, and included two large islands which were connected to each other and the mainland by seven bridges. The problem was to find a walk through the city that would cross each bridge once and only once. The islands could not be reached by any route other than the bridges, and every bridge must have been crossed completely every time; one could not walk halfway onto the bridge and then turn around and later cross the other half from the other side. Euler's analysis[edit] Euler's work was presented to the St. Significance in the history of mathematics[edit]
Students Who Challenge Us:Eight Things Skilled Teachers Think, Say, and Do Among the many challenges teachers face, often the most difficult is how to engage students who seem unreachable, who resist learning activities, or who disrupt them for others. This is also one of the challenges that skilled teachers have some control over. In my nine years of teaching high school, I've found that one of the best approaches to engaging challenging students is to develop their intrinsic motivation. The root of intrinsic is the Latin intrinsecus, a combination of two words meaning within and alongside. It's likely that our students are intrinsically motivated—just motivated to follow their own interests, not to do what we want them to do. Teachers' challenge is to work alongside our students, to know their interests and goals, and to develop trusting relationships that help students connect their learning to their goals in a way that motivates from within. How can teachers do this? What Skilled Teachers Can Think 1. 2. Which mind-set we hold makes a tremendous difference.