If you are working on Pythagorean Theorem with your students then this exercise might be a nice self checking activity. Take the numbers from 1-10 and pick any two, use those as the legs of a right angled triangle and calculate it's hypotenuse. Scratch out the two numbers used and add the hypotenuse to the list. Repeat this process (you should be able to do it 8 more times. The neat thing is that no matter which order you choose the numbers, you will always get the same last value. I will leave that value up to you to figure out. Thanks to @JamesTanton for this one.
Some nice ideas from @TheErickLee on modelling quadratics. I like the idea of physically demonstrating the nature of quadratics with a punctured water bottle and then snapping a picture and graphing on Desmos.
Curriculum Tags: MFM2P, MPM2D, MCR3U, MCF3M, MBF3C https://pbbmath.weebly.com/blog/down-the-drain
If you haven't heard of 2018's newest shape the scutoid, you're missing out. Here @ViHartViHart has some fun with scutoids and if you follow the link below you can get to her page with a net you can download to create your own. And as an added bonus, if you have a set of VR goggles, this video was recorded just for them.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8, MPM1D, MFM1P http://vihart.com/scutoids/
Currently I am the president of the OAME (Ontario Association for Mathematics Education) and one of the new features we are adding is a podcast and webinar series based on selected presentations from our annual conference. We call the series OAME Talks and we hope it is popular. So we have just launched and our first episode is with Jon Orr and Kyle Pearce talking about their session called Making Math Moments Matter. For this episode we are only doing the podcast but not a live webinar. Instead we are just linking to a previous webinar that Jon and Kyle did. Next month we will be featuring Marian Small in both podcast and live webinar form.
Curriculum Tags: All https://sites.google.com/oame.on.ca/oame-talks
Have you ever played the game SkyScraper. The premiss is simple you have an x by x (typically 4x4 or 5x5) and you need to place towers of varying height on each square. No row or column can have more than one tower of the same height. As hints, you are given which of the towers you can see when looking from the sides. In this post @markchubb3 has created some templates for doing these puzzles with relational rods as the towers. And don't forget to check out his templates for using snap cubes instead.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8 https://buildingmathematicians.wordpress.com/2018/12/20/skyscraper-templates-for-relational-rods/ https://buildingmathematicians.wordpress.com/2017/03/14/skyscraper-templates/
Are you looking for some card based games and manipulatives? The mathies.ca site has you covered. Matching, representations and more for decimals, fractions and whole numbers. Download alls the sets and get the instructions below. Thanks to @rossisen for pointing this out.
Curriculum Tags: All https://support.mathies.ca/en/mainSpace/RepresentationCardGames.php
This new podcast is the work of @MathletePearce and @MrOrr_Geek where they take their three part framework and unpack it over several episodes. The focus here is one what makes good teaching and how do we do it in a way that ideas stick with kids. Lots of good ideas here and the promise of interviews with people in the math community to punctuate their ideas. Each episode has info and extra resources to extend your thinking on each topic.
Curriculum Tags: All http://makemathmoments.com/podcast/
A few new podcasts episodes added to the list. One from More or Less on the standardization of the Kg and one from @MrBartonMaths with a great interview with Hannah Fry. And a new podcast feed from @Numberphile. These long form interviews are great to show students (and teachers) behind the vale of those in the math community fighting the good fight. Brady really does a good job in talking to his guests. Check them all out at the podcast tab above
Curriculum Tags: All http://ontariomath.blogspot.com/p/podcasts.html
I love this blog post from @rougeux on how the poster on Byrne's Euclid: The first six books of the Elements of Euclid with Coloured diagrams and symbols. The blog post goes into meticulous detail on everything that went into the making and design of the poster.
Curriculum Tags: All https://www.c82.net/euclid/ https://www.c82.net/blog/?id=79
I am not sure how I didn't know about this YouTube channel before but after listening to the first episode of the new Numberphile podcast, I was introduced to 3Blue1Brown. These are great visuals on all kinds of math topics. He tries to take complex ideas and break them down visually in a way that a high school math student might understand. A few you might like to start out are this one on why a sphere's surface area is 4Pir2, the essence of calculus or how Pi was almost 6.28... https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw
Curriculum Tags: MCR3U, MHF4U, MCV4U, MDM4U
I actually saw this a few months ago when @msbjacobs showed it at a meeting and I loved it. It's a short excerpt of a longer interview by Hannah Fry with Roger Penrose and he talks about how he was held back in school because he was a slow calculator.
Curriculum Tags: All https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ8GaK2YzWo
I am a sucker for anything to do with randomness. In this case, it's how we really don't understand its nature. This is good for all grade levels but has some discussion of combinatorics also.
Curriculum Tags: All https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP-Ipsat90c
There are many resources on the Centre for Education in Mathematics and Computing (CEMC). Not only are there years of past University of Waterloo math contests, but also course work for grade 7&8 math as well as grade 12 math (with more courses and grades on the way). But the newest thing that is on the sight (or at least new to me) is an online problem set generator that allows you to choose math topics and grade levels and it will generate a problem set of questions created from old math contests. Check it out.
Curriculum Tags: All https://cemc2.math.uwaterloo.ca/contest/PSG/school/index.php
At the OAME we are trying to develop a podcast and webinar series on some of the speakers from our annual conference. We are calling it @OAMETalks and we have released our first podcast featuring @mathletePearce and @MrOrr_Geek. Check it out along with our line up at the link below
Curriculum Tags: All https://sites.google.com/oame.on.ca/oame-talks
I like the treatment that @msbjacobs gives to nets. I like the idea of coming up with different nets for the same 3D shape along with looking at whether a net is possible or not. Some good examples here.
Here is a great example of a "Same/Different" for function notation from @g_brgmn. I was introduced to this idea by @saravdwerf as an example of a type of Stand and Talk.
This site has a series of 9 videos with a financial literacy theme. They were created by the people at Just for Laughs Gags and the Centre for Educational Economics. The videos themselves are more funny than informative. But they could be used as catalysts for financial literacy conversations. Each video has educational prompts and teaching materials associated with them.
Curriculum Tags: All https://moneylaughs.com
A challenge from @MrOrr_Geek. He has given you a challenge in the skeleton of a 3 Act task. He has given you the videos and some images with measurements but nothing else. No hints as to what this task could be about. Follow the link to see all the videos and get all the info and let him know what your lesson idea would be.
Curriculum Tags: All https://mrorr-isageek.com/doublejenga/
Here's another starter that came from @berkleyeverett called CrossNumberPuzzles where the point is to make each row or column sum to a specific number.
Curriculum Tags: All https://twitter.com/hashtag/CrossNumberPuzzle?src=hash
Are you a math facilitator in Ontario? If so you may have been part of a virtual session this week with details on how to implement the Ministry of Ed's Focus on the Fundamentals campaign. If you missed it then you should check out their training site. There are a lot of good videos here to give more details on what the intent of this initiative is. Take a look.
Curriculum Tags: All https://math.thelearningexchange.ca/training/
I don't think we can have enough visual representations of mathematics for students. This site from @BerkeleyEverett is new to me but I think it's been around for about a year. I think these kinds of visuals are not only good for students as they are learning these concepts for the first time but also for remediation in the later grades. Take a look.
Curriculum Tags: All https://mathvisuals.wordpress.com/
This is an interesting take on how to deal with remediation with students from @cheesemonkeysf. Instead of working with students individually, turn the class into a community of learners with the same goal:
"I announced that our skills quiz for this unit was going to be a whole-class skills quiz, in which everybody would earn the AVERAGE SCORE of all individual quiz scores taken together."
I have continued to create videos on mini constructions using Desmos Geometry. This time I have added five more, each one about one of the different types of transformations that can be done. Check them all out at the link below
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8 http://engaging-math.blogspot.com/p/desmos-geometry-videos.html
I made this quick video on creating a dynamic fraction or percent circle using a template. You can download the template here.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ku6IaIAVYIM
Are there some high school teachers out there who can make me feel better? Seeing my children's high school maths experience is so dispiriting. Tell me you are breaking this cycle? Policy makers need to support teachers in making urgent change. pic.twitter.com/FIHtwsIFiu
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
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/
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
If you are working on Pythagorean Theorem with your students then this exercise might be a nice self checking activity. Take the numbers from 1-10 and pick any two, use those as the legs of a right angled triangle and calculate it's hypotenuse. Scratch out the two numbers used and add the hypotenuse to the list. Repeat this process (you should be able to do it 8 more times. The neat thing is that no matter which order you choose the numbers, you will always get the same last value. I will leave that value up to you to figure out. Thanks to @JamesTanton for this one.
If you want your senior students to be good at modelling then you have to give them opportunities to model things that may not be obvious. In this activity @ChrisHunter36 does that and get's some great results from students.
Want to mathematically figure out which is the best line to cue in while shopping?
