Friday, November 30, 2018

Math Links for Week Ending Nov 30th, 2018

I dare you to watch this video and not have your curiosity piqued. In it @MrOrr_Geek and @MathletePearce take one for the team to explore proportional reasoning concepts. Get the full 3Act math task at the link below.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MAT1L, MAT2L
https://mrorr-isageek.com/chocolate-mania/


There has been a lot of talk in Ontario lately about going back to basics. And although I don't think we have lost the basics (and what the basics actually are is a discussion on its own), I do think there is no harm in practicing basic skills beyond the grades that they are taught. In this case, I took a cue from @gfletchy who has a set of subitizing multiplication cards and built a few different versions of these array multiplication cards. This way we can continue to practice mental multiplication without resorting to memorization techniques. With these cards students can practice multiplication up to 12x12.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MAT1L, MAT2L
http://engaging-math.blogspot.com/2018/11/array-multiplication-cards.html

It's no surprise that I am big fan of @pgliljedahl's ideas about the Thinking Classroom. Some of the things that still perplex me are things like assessment and how to properly manage flow. Another thing is the skill of helping students take notes. In this post @PaiMath does a great job outlining what note taking looks like in the Thinking Classroom. This is part one so I assume part two will be on the way.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://intersectpai.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-thinking-classroom-note-taking-part.html


Thanks for pointing this out @ddmeyer
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/ddmeyer/status/1067989653003788289

A few weeks ago we hosted the OAME Leadership conference in Windsor. Here is a nice summary from @MarkChubb3 that does a nice job of connecting to the Ontario math curriculum processes of Reasoning & Proving.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://buildingmathematicians.wordpress.com/2018/11/14/reasoning-proving/



Continuing the conversation about math for math's sake, @mathgarden has this post on Medium. One thing I really like is the play aspect of how he dealt with math at home with his daughter. I feel like this is the kind of homework that our kids need. Just to tinker with math.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://medium.com/@sunilsingh_42118/mathematics-waits-for-everyone-but-few-wait-for-mathematics-7095c86cda70

I think that sometimes probability gets glossed over when, in fact, I think we need to look deeper at probability as it is one of those mathematical concepts that we want our our students to have a good grasp of. How else are we to teach them of the perils of gambling and lotteries. That all being said, @mathisvisual has tried to demystify theoretical probability in this video. Go to the link below for the full breakdown.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://mathisvisual.com/probability/

If you are doing patterning and you are looking for some non mathematical patterns to have some fun with your kids with, then @Numberphile has you covered.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeGSQggDkxI

It's @DonFraser9 doing what he does best. Mixing a bit of humour and math
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/DonFraser9/status/1068685234487488512




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Friday, November 23, 2018

Math Links for Week Ending Nov. 23rd, 2018

This week I was asked to do a day of math activities for grade 7&8 students in a school. I wanted to do activities that had definite mathematical connections but were also fun and engaging. as it turned out all I had to do was look to @DavidButlerUoA's site. He often runs these sessions called 100 Factorial and these seemed like just the kind of thing to do with these students. We did Body Scale Prime Climb (thanks to @MathforLove), Panda Squares and Quarter the Cross. But you should check out all of his 100 Factorial ideas at the link below.You (and your students) won't be disappointed.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://blogs.adelaide.edu.au/maths-learning/category/one-hundred-factorial/

While I was looking for activities with my grade 7&8 students I came across this nice set of activities from @nomad_penguin on classifying quadrilaterals. From simple classifying to sorting to playing guess who (and other stuff). Have fun.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
 https://amiealbrecht.com/2017/10/03/a-lesson-plan-for-quadrilaterals/






I created this activity for exploring the nature of the ambiguous case for sine law. It uses some of the Desmos geometry tools but also in the end, it also uses Challenge Creator where students create their own challenges for the rest of their classmates. This is a really good activity to have students practice the sine law.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCT4C
http://engaging-math.blogspot.com/p/desmos-activities_10.html




When I was fiddling around with solutions to Quarter the Cross, I created this dynamic sketch dealing with the area of triangles. When I first looked at it, I was surprised at how the areas stayed similar. It took me a little thinking to figure out why this happens. You can play around with the dynamic sketch at the link below.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://www.desmos.com/geometry/kuwxwcvcbg







Here's a relatively simple intro to similar triangles from @marybourassa. The thing I like about this is that it connects similar triangles to Pythagorean theorem to trig ratios. It's not that long but would be a good addition to any class doing spiralling.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P
http://marybourassa.blogspot.com/2018/11/similar-triangles-introduction.html





This week we had the Ontario government had a virtual town hall on the current state of education. And @msbjacobs was there to live Tweet it. Its pretty interesting and I'm glad that he did it. Follow the whole set of Tweets here by clicking through on the link.
Curriculum Tags:All
https://twitter.com/msbjacobs/status/1065417401062187008

Are you interested in learning how to make dynamic constructions? Using Desmos Geometry, I started creating this one minute videos to show how to do some simple constructions. One of them is below but click on the link to see them all.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://engaging-math.blogspot.com/p/desmos-geometry-videos.html

Here's a cool property: Square any prime number and the answer is 1 more than a multiple of 24. So you could easily connect this to any sort of calculation practice but even better, if you are doing anything with expanding binomials, this might be an interesting context to work in that area.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM2D, MFM2P
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMkIiFs35HQ


I wanted to show a few more of the Quarter the Cross solutions that we saw this week.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
https://twitter.com/davidpetro314/status/1064969713208446978




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Friday, November 16, 2018

Math Links for Week Ending Nov. 16th, 2018

So if you are like me, you consider yourself a "Sketchhead". That is, someone who builds in Geometer's Sketchpad. GSP has fallen by the wayside more recently but an online beta-test version of GSP has just been released for public consumption. You can use most of the constructions tools that you are used to having and the ability to upload and download the new GSP files (.json). You can create GSP files with custom tool sets and make them available for student use. There is also a way to upload multiple student files to one page for viewing. Thanks to @dpscher for pointing this out. Daniel says that more features and improved functionality are on the roadmap for Web Sketchpad.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://geometricfunctions.org/fc/tools/
This new activity from @desmos combines some of the best pedagogical and technological features they have. I think most of us can agree that kids love marbleslides. This new activity for linear relations is like marbleslides but instead of collecting stars with the marbles, they are collecting coins. And one of the things that, I think, make it better than marbleslides is that when typing an equation in marbleslides, your equation starts to graph as soon as you type it. So you can see mistakes happening on the fly. This makes it a bit easier to guess without knowing the math. Here you have to type the equation and submit it before you see it and it keeps track of the number of trials you use. Ending the activity off is a Challenge Creator so kids can create their own challenge to share with the rest of the class. Check it out.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM2P
https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/5bcdf906c1d7660b58d8b866

I had a friend of mine do a guest post on my Found Data blog. In it @virgonomic takes some data from t-shirt sales and designs from Notre Dame and collects it for analysis. It's definitely a "dirty" set of data but mostly linear and good for doing some interesting interpolating.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
https://found-data.blogspot.com/2018/11/notre-dame-university-shirt.html

I have finally gotten around to creating a Desmos activity using Challenge Creator. in this case it's for students to practice the sine law while also investigating the ambiguous case. Students first investigate and then do the practice.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MCT4C
https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/5beceb2ea437fd5fb1ae49d0




In this post, @mathletepearce does a good job of taking a task and showing how it could be done to different depths from grade 1 all the way to grade 7. He goes in detail on the proportional reasoning and gives us examples of student work and thinking along the way.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7
https://tapintoteenminds.com/proportional-relationships-developmentally/

A neat little 3Act task from @MrOrr_Geek dealing with least common multiples. What do you notice and wonder after this first task? Follow the link for the entire task.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://mrorr-isageek.com/hour-glass-multiples/



I have mentioned @MonaChalabi before. She is the data scientist at the Guardian and does some interesting visualizations of data. Here's a series on the participation of people of colour in outdoor sports. 
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
https://www.instagram.com/p/BqKrV4gnVcM/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet







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Saturday, November 10, 2018

Math Links for Week Ending Nov. 9th, 2017


I was fortunate enough to help organize this year's OAME Leadership conference in locally here in Windsor. We had three keynotes (@ddmeyer, @ctfosnot, @gfletchy) and a bunch of breakout sessions over a day and a half. If you are interested here is the website (which will eventually have links from many of presentations). The theme was Learning in the 21st Century and we had different perspectives on how that can be done for teachers and students. Here is the feed from the hashtag #OAMELead. There were so many quotable lines (even one by me) that I tried to compile some of them  below. Thanks to all those who filled the "back channel" (just a few from @ddmeyer, @markchubb3, @hkodai, @mrbinfeild).
Curriculum Tags:All
bit.ly/OAMELead2018


I brought a pile of games to the OAME Leadership conference to play in the evening and other people started to bring up other puzzles. I have to check these and you should too.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/YohakuPuzzle


There is definitely a math question in here. What question will you ask?
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/mrgerberd/status/1059091555129192449

From @ddmeyer's keynote at #OAMELead. The question is: "What is the area of the shaded region?" Do this with a group of students or teachers to see the surprise. The connection could be calculating slope or rates of change on this one but I say that with no explanation :-)
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1D
https://twitter.com/MarkChubb3/status/1060729482372435968

Check out this fraction activity from just a few decades ago
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://twitter.com/mathsjem/status/1059513603680800769


Need a real box plot? What I can't tell is whether this was taken on the inside and the box plot was drawn on the window or just drawn digitally on the image. I hope its the former
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
https://twitter.com/AnkerMath/status/1060735881382780928

Some sketchnotes from @RiversoMaria on the OAME Leadership Keynotes and a couple of the breakouts. 
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/RiversoMaria/status/1060753949437976576

https://twitter.com/RiversoMaria/status/1060942897216925697

https://twitter.com/RiversoMaria/status/1060944113854545921

https://twitter.com/RiversoMaria/status/1060988389783191553

https://twitter.com/RiversoMaria/status/1060986518905479168

https://twitter.com/RiversoMaria/status/1061024621514784768


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Friday, November 2, 2018

Math Links for Week Ending Nov. 2nd, 2018

Hey, I am helping out with a Twitter chat on Tuesday night at 9pm EST as part of the #esc11math monthly chat. I am going to try to do a combination Twitter chat and live @Desmos activity on some simple geometry problems. So come out and try a bit of dynamic geometry using @Desmos. How do you participate in a Twitter chat, you ask? To be honest, despite being on Twitter for 9 years, I've never participated. My thinking is that the best way is to follow their hashtag and see the conversation streaming. Then if you want to participate, make sure you include the chat hashtag in your Tweet.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/hashtag/esc11math?f=tweets&vertical=default&src=hash


And yet another Ontario teacher has published a book. This time it's @matthewoldridge with "Teaching Mathematics through Problem Solving". I like the idea that it looks at problem solving by showing that mathematics can be playful and engaging. Check it out while quantities last.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.amazon.ca/Teaching-Mathematics-through-Problem-Solving-Classrooms/dp/147584333X





This week I saw the culmination of an activity I created with @tomsich83 to have students use TI CBRs and Lego EV3 robots to recreate distance time graphs as part of their grade 9 STEM class. Students create an EV3 robot that will carry the CBR and then have to program it to match various distance time graphs. Get the handout at the link below.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NIa-W5zcW_MihuO8N_0kGYxol3L4gCLsHb6sbCFPPVA/edit

If you have ever used the site Open Middle, you know how good these questions are for going deeper on simple knowledge based questions. Here @AliceKeeler has a Google Slides template to use when working with this particular open middle problem dealing with equivalent fractions.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://alicekeeler.com/2018/10/21/open-middle-equivalent-fractions-activity/

It's always good to find resources on probability that connect to real things that people experience. In this case it's the Monopoly game at McDonalds here in Canada. Specifically, it starts with a piece about some of the fraud associated with the game and ends with a statistician describing the real odds of winning. Thanks to Lorna Baltrusuinas for this one.
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
https://theconversation.com/mcdonalds-monopoly-a-statistician-explains-the-real-odds-of-winning-106051

In this post @MrOrr_Geek tackles the myth of planning lessons in isolation. I don't think that he is suggesting that teachers don't plan in isolation but instead that some of the best lessons aren't. Collaboration is the key and that collaboration seems to be much easier now than ever before with tools like Twitter, blogs and email. You no longer need to physically be in the same room (or the same city) to collaborate. Check out his evidence (from himself and other Ontario educators) and tips at his post below.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://mrorr-isageek.com/how-we-can-avoid-a-major-lesson-planning-misconception/

Another video from @MathIsVisual on visualizing mean. This time with larger numbers. Click on the link, below, for the full play by play on how to use it.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://mathisvisual.com/mean-part2/

There are a lot of these videos online (and I love every one). None the less here's another plan landing in a crosswind. Perfect for talking about addition of vectors.
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9ePtRpyyks


Here's a costume idea that you can "steal" for next year.
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MHF4U
https://twitter.com/LukeSelfwalker/status/1056271693419823104

It's not exactly hard data but it could be real
Curriculum Tags: MDM4U
https://twitter.com/bobloch/status/1053026824299646978
Halloween may be over but you might want to put this activity for converting between fractions and decimals in your back pocket for next year.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
https://twitter.com/MrNiksMathClass/status/1057223395044134914

This kind of dynamic tiling is pretty cool
Curriculum Tags: Gr7
https://twitter.com/christianp/status/1055846712714125312



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Friday, October 26, 2018

Math Links for Week Ending Oct. 26th, 2018

Earlier this year I posted about @Desmos releasing some Two Truths and a Lie activities, Now they have released four more. These are very simple activities in that they each have one slide with a sample 2T&L and then the second slide is a Challenge Creator activity designed to look like the first slide. A challenge creator is when students are given constraints to create their own problem (in this case 2T&L) and once done, that activity will then automatically be shared with the rest of the class. So in the end your students have a student created activity to practice that particular skill. In this case they have released one for conics, lines, parabolas and exponents. You can see all of their other challenge creator activities here.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://teacher.desmos.com/search?q=two+truths
http://blog.desmos.com/post/179220878917/friday-fave-for-october-19

I have been tinkering with creating an activity for dilations but then came upon this one from @finding_EMU that does a great job of introducing and investigating the idea.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7
https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/5bc94477122fd04342f8b15d




Some walnut crushing linear relations here. Follow the link for the data set of time and number of crushed walnuts. The guy is pretty good at being consistent with his walnut crushing. Check out the data and analyze the files at the link below.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM1P, MDM4U, MAP4C
http://found-data.blogspot.com/2018/10/walnut-crushing-world-record.html


A big lottery this week and here's some good advice.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/ddmeyer/status/1054554545840242689

And more lottery humour
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/DonFraser9/status/1055921047772360704


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Friday, October 19, 2018

Math Links for Week Ending Oct. 19th, 2018

Even though on this blog I feature math links related to grade 6-12 math, I don't mind pointing out good stuff that comes out of the Ontario Math community, even when it isn't in that realm. So this week @AliceAspinall published a children's book promoting mathematics. Everyone Can Learn Math is out now and is the story of Amy's struggle to get a math assignment done. Spoiler alert: she finds that struggle and hard work are all part of being successful in anything, including math.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://books.friesenpress.com/store/title/119734000072585896/Alice-Aspinall-Everyone-Can-Learn-Math

I have mentioned Delta Math before but they just released 18 new geometric construction activities so if you haven't already got your kids to try Delta Math for practice, this might be the thing that will get you there.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://www.deltamath.com/
Wired Math is a site curated by the University of Waterloo to give enrichment activities for grades 7-10. There are challenges, interactive games and more. A good resource to remind us that sometimes as we try to help the struggling learners, we forget about those who aren't struggling. Thanks to @Robin_Grondin for pointing this one out.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://wiredmath.ca

Some fun stuff here to have students practice computation and order of operations giving answers like palindromic numbers. A fun way to practice computation. Make sure you click on the link to get to the actual paper with all the examples (from the simple to the complex).
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P, MPM2D, MCR3U, MCF3M
https://twitter.com/pickover/status/598953794878218241

I have mentioned before that the NY Times publishes a graph a week where they ask what you Notice and Wonder. In this post, @AliceKeeler provides a structure for students to use a Google Sheet to help document their notice and wonderings.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MBF3C, MDM4U, MAP4C
https://alicekeeler.com/2018/10/10/create-notice-google-sheets/






I saw this Tweet from @DavidButlerUoA on creating patterns with hexagons sized by the Golden ratio and created this Google Drawing so that you could create your own.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1WTTswRlwSKvxmtRFo3DveMKfSvVn7QY9EY9LPYrxanE/copy



A great quick video connection between the number line and ratio tables from @mathletepearce
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P
https://twitter.com/MathletePearce/status/1052213054841196544


This is not a new concept but the video that @AlexOverwijk posts about falling dominos is followed up with some great shots of student work in the comments to get a sense of the #ThinkingClassroom. Perfect for dealing with exponential functions
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MHF4U
https://twitter.com/AlexOverwijk/status/1052339204296925184


A very "mathie" I love math poster
Curriculum Tags: All
https://twitter.com/divbyzero/status/1053263753070952448



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