Math Links for Week Ending Feb. 20, 2015

Lately I have been finding a lot of resources that resonate with the idea that just focusing on practicing questions in math class is not where our focus should be. That we have to incorporate more problem solving, inquiry and messiness into our math student's every day lives. Here is another reminder from Andrew Stadel and Steve Leinwand in what they call an "Elevator Pitch"
Curriculum Tags: All
http://mr-stadel.blogspot.ca/2015/02/elevator-speech-by-steve-leinwand.html

I have been finding a lot of resources lately that are the result of two or more people collaborating via the Interwebs. Here is another one. Amy at the Square Root of Negative One blog started with an activity to teach properties of polynomials functions that just had cards with graphs. Then Julie at the I Teach Math blog tweaked it to include description cards so that they could be used as a card matching activity. One of the things I liked on Amy's original blog post (from 2013) was this statement:

"This used to take me 4 minutes. I would write four rules on the board and they would copy them down.Today it took 24. But it was fun. And later I saw somebody end-behavior dancing in the hallway.This approach is better than just telling them, right?"

That is, sure it's faster to just tell them, but they likely won't retain the info or enjoy it as much. Get all the cards from these two posts.
Curriculum Tags: MHF4U
http://ispeakmath.org/2015/02/16/polynomial-roots-and-end-behavior-card-sort/
http://squarerootofnegativeoneteachmath.blogspot.ca/2013/01/how-i-sextupled-time-it-takes-to-teach.html

Here's a great maximizing volume activity that can be done with grade 9 students for that part of the curriculum. Of course it could be a calculus activity too but the basic principle is "what is the largest open topped box you can make from a standard piece of paper. This is actually an old post from Fawn but was just mentioned by used by Julie at I Teach Math and updated from the original 2013 post with Desmos and Google forms.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MCV4U
http://ispeakmath.org/2015/02/16/maximizing-box-volume-with-popcorn/
http://fawnnguyen.com/why-wait-for-calculus/





A nice proportion activity is to take a standard Barbie and scale her up to what human size would be. Kids are typically shocked at how unrealistic she is. And here are three takes from three different people on how that goes in class
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
http://ispeakmath.org/2015/02/19/barbie-proportions-geometry/
http://fawnnguyen.com/playing-barbies-2/
http://iisanumber.blogspot.ca/2013/01/if-barbie-were-as-tall-as-me-lesson-in.html





Mary at the Making Math Meaningful blog has an activity that reminds me of our own squaring activity for discovering Pythagorean Theorem in grade 8. It's one of the activities she is using to spiral through the curriculum in grade 10 applied. As she did last year, this year she is blogging about each class. If you teach grade 10 applied and are into something a bit more progressive, then check out her blog
Curriculum Tags: Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MFM2P
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2015/02/mfm2p-day-13-triangles.html

I know it's late but the Valentine's Desmos app was a fun way to say you love someone - with math. You can still send them a Math-o-gram
Curriculum Tags: All
http://mathogram.desmos.com/