Posts tagged as:

math

Tearing the House Down pt. 1: No (Limiting) Math Gimmicks!

by Jose on January 11, 2010 · 10 comments

in life

Tin Foil Rex

Tin Foil Rex

I could have easily declared the following as a math teacher, but I’m being more demonstrative now:

No. More. FOIL.

Anyone who’s followed these posting in the last couple of years knows that I’m all for finding efficient ways of remembering how one works through different elements of math. I’m also for remembering processes so long as, later on, there’s a stronger element of true understanding there. Yet, what inevitably ends up happening is one of three scenarios:

1. They confuse “First, Outside, Inside, Last” i.e. trying to combine the two terms right next to each other when they’re not like terms.

2. They can’t factor because the mnemonic wasn’t taught to them for backwards compatibility.

3. They move on to trinomial multiplication and run out of letters.

I’m of the opinion that the geometric method just works whichever way around. It gives a visual representation to my students of how any polynomial can be multiplied or factored for that matter. For my ELLs particularly, making the transition from concrete to abstract is that much more important. Furthermore, I find FOIL, like so many other gimmicks, limited to their scope. They almost impose limits on what our children can and need to know for their future maths.

In the younger grades, I can somewhat understand trying to focus on a certain set of cases for studying math. When developing number sense, children need a certain set of axioms by which to ground their understanding of our math system. However, by the time they get to 8th grade, some of these gimmicks rear their ugly head when integers get involved. (PEMDAS and Keep-Keep-Change come to mind here). Thus, they’re so stuck in how the “last” teacher taught them that unlearning the previous methods become difficult.

With my students in 8th grade, I have an obligation to leave these students in good shape for high school. Most of my alumni can tell you that my teaching got them at least through 1st semester of freshman year, if not through all of it. If we think of our teaching (and our students) as part of a continuous learning process and not an assessment driven segment that someone down the assembly line may (or may not) pick up down the line. Limiting the amount of gimmicks (or developing fresh and profound ones, whatever that means) increase the likelihood that our students can delve into these topics, no matter what level of math they’re in.

Because I’d rather my students be the ones foiling and not getting FOILed.

Mr. V, who got one thing he can tell you: you’ve gotta be free …

p.s. – JD provided the basis for this a year ago, but it’s definitely worth going over.

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I Need Your Full Cooperation and Total Attention

by Jose on February 23, 2009 · 4 comments

in life

Def Squad

Def Squad

Just a few things I’d like to mention.

I came into my classroom ready to breeze through the last few standards before the NYS Math Test (probability, permutations, and the like). I came in with a vengeance, remembering the things I needed to cover before those two dreaded words:

Test. Prep.

I’m officially nervous about the NYS Math Test 9 school days from now. I don’t think my kids are in many ways prepared to excel on that test. Today, I went to other classes to see how they did test prep, and found some really good and solid ideas for how to do test prep. I suppose I should share them here, but I’d rather not until I figure it all out.

Anyone have any ideas for making test prep informative without making it boring? I’m really trying to make it worthwhile for both of us (us being the teacher and students). Help if you know how.

Jose, who just needs this week to be over.

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Open Thread: What Makes a Good Math Teacher?

by Jose on February 19, 2009 · 7 comments

in life

Einstein

Einstein

Here are a few good questions for everyone. At the behest of brran, I’ve decided to start an open thread about math teachers. As the title says, what makes a good math teacher?

As someone who considers himself a good math teacher, I often wonder what takes a teacher from good to great, or even from adequate to good. What are your criterion for good math teaching? I think this thread may be useful for those of us in math education, and those of us who love math (or even hate math).

Here are some questions to get your mind going:

  • What was your favorite math subject? (Anything from k-college is wanted)
  • Who was your favorite math teacher?
  • Why did you like them so much?
  • Was it about the academics or about the feelings you got from that person?
  • Is there a particular math concept that you enjoyed?
  • Did you love or hate math?
  • If you hated math for most of your life, why is that? What would have improved your experience?

OK, your turn. Throw out your craziest, sensationalist, or even mild ideas about these questions. The floor is yours. If you’re a math teacher / educator, think about your own teaching and whether you think you’re a good math teacher.

Jose, who wants you to use whatever method you please to answer this question.

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A Life’s Perspective on Ratios

by Jose on October 28, 2008 · 5 comments

in life

King Henry the 8th

You know you’re a math teacher when even I’m even starting to make the small parts of life mathematical.

A few instances:

Friend Quality vs. Quantity Ratio

I had a long conversation with a friend of mine who was looking at someone’s profile on Facebook and mentioning how many friends this person had. This person apparently had tons of people from all across the Northeast and even into the Midwest. It’s easy to think that the person’s making great connections. But then I said, “What if some other person’s friends on Facebook were Ban Ki-Moon, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., and Russell Simmons?” Who cares if you have 2000+ friends when the 5 friends this person may know and comment on his or her posts have a combined wealth and influence of over a kagillion dollars? I understand that there are different definitions of wealth and fortune, but how powerful are your connections if everything you do is spread thin?

Good Class vs. Bad Class Ratio

At first, teachers (good or bad) will tell you that there’s that one class that they really don’t get along with. But then when you ask them to narrow that, it’s really down to about 5-6. As a matter of fact, that’s most classes actually. The 10% ratio doesn’t work for just the most “talented” individuals, but the ones that need more serious intervention. Out of 90 or so children, if I only have 9 or less total that need that sort of intervention, that’s a good day. (just hopefully not in the same class)

Common Quality vs. Quantity Ratio

Now, would I prefer a comment that discussed the global economy in the eyes of Karl Marx or Deng Xiaoping (when relevant) or “hey nice site.” I got a billion comments from Tramadol spammers who can fill that requirement quite nicely. Not that I’m dissing those who leave any comments, but comments of substance, whether they’re one-liners or full paragraphs are much better than 200 spews of randomness. Any day.

All this to say that numbers matter, but if we can’t interpret what they mean, then they’re wasted. We need to look at the value and variables behind them all.

jose, getting better at guestimation by the day …

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Ojala Que Llueva Cafe En El Campo (Hope That It Rains Coffee In The Field)

by Jose on July 22, 2008 · 16 comments

in life

Kids In Front of School In Rain

Juan Luis Guerra’s quintessential song is “Ojala Que Llueva Cafe En El Campo,” a song that comes across more as a incantation that the poor and hopefully at the least have coffee somehow fall from the sky to bless them, as if to say that G_d might bless them with their basic necessities to relieve them from their hunger, strife, and sorrow. Riddled with metaphors and as passionate as any song you’ll hear, it’s a reminder of how simple his people’s needs really are. In our own little way, we can be that “cafe” for someone else, not necessarily saving the children, but giving them what they need as well as we can.

On the first night that I landed in Dominican Republic, in the village my mother comes from, I almost immediately found myself teaching math, in a town in need of someone who understands how to turn “improper” fractions into mixed numbers, and how to divide. It’s scary that, even on my vacation, I’m put in the precarious position of trying to tutor a student on 2 years of math in 2 hours. The 16-year-old had a test the next day, and she didn’t really understand anything her teacher was talking about. Of course, that’s where I get to show off and make students wish they got excited about math the way I do. (ed note: Please don’t get it twisted. For goodness sakes, this is strictly PG if not G.)

Granted, a couple of things are at work here. First off, the environment she’s been raised in isn’t the best. The emphasis on education in the neighborhood is, to put it politely, disparate, seldom, and limited. There are a few residents of the hood who’ve done great things like try out for the Olympics and gone to Argentina and Spain (I’m proud to call them family), but most of the people in my neighborhood beyond that. There’s also the utter destruction of their streets, the filth that emanates from the lack of sewage and garbage transport, the violence and rape that’s occured and increased over the last 6-7 years, and what seems like an unresponsive government only concerned with getting their faces painted all over buildings and not reaching back to their supporters.

There was also her attitude. Her voice went from sweet to rancid in seconds, calling out her friends and passersby all types of names that I wasn’t too fond of. When I’m in an educational mind frame, I can’t help but roll my eyes when I’m cursing. Her friend, whose 2 years younger but who looks 10 years older, quit school (or was asked to leave) because of a prank she pulled on a teacher. Her own voice seemed to echo a naiveté about the consequences of her actions, and what most of my friends here deem as unacceptable (having a family really early) seems to be her destiny from the hints she dropped about herself.

Yet, the one slice of hope, and that’s when the next day, the girl I taught told me she definitely passed her math exam, and that excited me a bit. I also knew I couldn’t be there for the rest of her educational career to see her through “la universidad.” However, I did find something out about my little cousin Wanda that I would have never known.

She likes math.

A lot.

And she’s proficient.

Once I found out, my brother and I decided we’d sponsor her to come to the States, that is, if her grades remained at the excellent level they’re at. I put down a nice down payment, and all they needed to do was make sure she’d do what she needed. Not to say that the conditions here are the greatest, but I also find that the most successful people out of Dominican Republic have traveled to other places besides the other side of their country. They can follow the examples of Juan Luis Guerra, Aventura, Julia Alvarez, Junot Diaz, Amelia Vega, Felix Sanchez, and the myriad of underrated athletes, politicians, historians, writers, beauty pageant contestants, and television personalities that may come from their neighborhoods.

But more than anything, they can come back to their neighborhoods and be the coffee that awakens the people in their neighborhoods.

Ojala que llueva cafe …

jose, who’s taken some of the lessons from over there and applied them to his mindset here …

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Ace of Bases

by Jose on April 29, 2008 · 4 comments

in life

Ace of Base

This week, I’ve taken Greg Tang’s advice from the NCTM Conference and started working with the kids on different bases. And by different bases, I mean different ways of looking at the number systems we use. One of the biggest reasons why kids don’t get math in general is because the numbers themselves don’t make sense to them. For example, a child who looks at 1,234 can tell me that it’s more than 1000, but when it comes to dividing, they can’t tell me how many 100s or even why the 3 isn’t just a 3 but a 30. Using Greg Tang’s advice then (to work in different number systems and hope they can develop rules that are applicable to the base 10 number system that they’re already familiar with).

At first, the whole idea of trying binary and tertiary number systems was ludicrous. Why would I want to teach them something about these number systems when they hardly get their own? Fair enough. Once I flipped it on them and told them it was a game, and the rules were that you could only use the digits lower than the base number, they ate it up. A hook. So for base two, they said,

0, 1, 2, … 10, 11, 12 … 20, … 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000 … (eventually they got it right)

So we finally crossed that counting barrier. Now that we were actually in the shore of where I wanted to get them, I tried seeing if they could do it for base 3. Same results.

0, 1, 2, 10, 11, 12, 20, 21, 22, 100, 101, 102, 110, 111, 112, 120 … (they were much better at this one after seeing that last one)

Then I asked them to help me make some rules, and all three classes basically saw the same patterns (after some good questions on my part, honestly):

1. We start with the number 0.

2. We work with all the digits less than the base number.

3. Once we get to the base number in that row, we use the next row, and start from 0 again in that first row.

So far so good. Today, we tried to turn numbers in base 2 to their corresponding number in base 10. Again, I give them a oversimplified version of the place value system we already established and maybe they’ll come to some conclusions about how to arrive at our conversions. I made little boxes around the number and put the number representing the place value over it (not the name, but the actual number) just to make it easier for them to see.

Example:

110 in base 2 equals 6 in base 10. Why? Because 1 is in the 4s place, the next 1 is in the 2s place, and 0 is in the 1’s place, so we have 1 4, 1 2, and 0 1s i.e. we have a total of 6.

Then one of my kids yells out,

“So what you’re saying is that we multiply the place value by what’s in the box?”

SUCCESS! Hopefully he saw the sign. (har har har). Yes, I’m a math teacher. I’m allowed a corny joke here and there.

jose, who loves teaching math when the kids are actually learning something …

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8 Things I Learned At the NCTM (or Planet of the 8s)

by Jose on April 15, 2008 · 4 comments

in life

I have to tell you, I definitely felt like I learned a lot at the conference I keep telling you all about. I discovered a lot about my own teaching and how I’m doing a lot more right than I thought, but also found stuff that I need to work on more diligently. I suppose if I’m going to be in this as a career, I should learn a few things here and there.

Like I mentioned before, I took copious notes at the conference, hoping to not only remember what I was taught but also share with mi gente. I’ll try to make it brief and all notes are available in full if you ask, but here’s my summarized top ten:

1. Teachers don’t do a good enough job helping kids understand abstractly as well as concretely. (courtesy of Greg Tang, author of The Grapes of Math)

I totally see this. For the first decade and a 1/2 of my education, I knew what place value was, but I didn’t understand how it worked until I got into college, when I started learning more about binary systems as a computer science major. We need to push the kids’ thinking, and try to help them become more abstract thinking and give them a foundation for that thinking.

This man’s also the one that said, “What’s the 8th planet in our solar system? What, you don’t know? It’s Planet of the Eights! It’s a joke, don’t you get it?” Well done.

2. One person’s self-evident truth is another person’s unfounded theory. (courtesy of Julian Weissglass)

Weissglass used a historical analysis of the Constitution to concretely explain the last statement. If we understand the Constitution as it was written, then we’ll see that it didn’t apply to a huge section of America’s constitution. In other words, what some at the time may have considered a basic assumption for living may not have been so for another person. Actually, I want to write more about this later on (presses pause until Thursday).

3. Math, art, and technology mesh much more readily if we think a little more deeply. Just ask Leonardo daVinci. (courtesy of Nikki Blair)

4. Not only are we in the business of pushing kids to be better, but making it harder for them to be average. (courtesy of Larry Bradsbury)

If we want to become better teachers, we need a more systematic approach, by defining skills that we want the kids to learn, diagnose student needs, provide appropriate activities, evaluate student learning, reteach if need be, and maintain better student records.

5. Good feedback isn’t an easy task. (courtesy of Laura Maly and Sharon Kolade)

Just like the comments we leave in blogs, writing good comments on posts can change how the original writer improves or understands the task at hand.

6. Sometimes, it’s the kids that are at the highest levels that need the most help. (courtesy of Dr. Joyce Fisher)

With regards to ELLs (English Language Learners), sometimes they’ll be really good at doing math in their own language, but they’ll have a hard time translating that math knowledge into English because not every concept in Spanish has a cognate in English.

7. Broaden the question so more students have entry into the discussion. (courtesy of Marian Small)

This applies to everyone, but if we look at differentiated instruction, sometimes asking a specific question can really limit who will participate in the conversation. For some purposes, it may be good to target the question for a specific answer, but in general, making the question accessible to every student will allow even the low-level students to feel engaged in the conversation. So, for example, instead of asking, “Is 6 a factor of 54?” we might ask, “What relationships can we make between 54 and 6?”

8. Be careful with too many cultural references in your exams. (courtesy of Carol Caref)

Unfortunately, when it comes to tests, they’re often culturally biased without people even realizing it. Those biases can make the difference between students who excel in their tests, and those that understand the math but can’t grasp it because they don’t know what the dimensions of a house look like or how a mortgage works.

Also, I got to see David M. Schwartz work his magic with How Much Is a Million? and Nora Ramirez, president of TODOS (a group for teachers who teach Latino / Hispanic students) not only demo a lesson on proportions, but also explain the values of going her math teacher organization. The conference also gave me a good indication that, overall, I’m on the right track. I just need to keep plugging away.

I was actually a little disappointed that I didn’t see any of the prominent edubloggers either go to the conference or present at the NCTM, but I suppose with time that too shall pass.

jose, who will finally start using his SmartBoard …

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Abstracting the Concrete

by Jose on February 20, 2008 · 5 comments

in Uncategorized

Last week in the classroom, I started dreading the idea of the two worst words for any regular teacher in this country: test prep. I hate it because it’s a contrived barometer of what they’ve truly learned, and en masse, becomes the data for metrics used to evaluate student progress, teacher competency, school preparedness, and demographic success rates. Unfortunately, only the people on the bottom of the totem pole ever address the malleability of these tests; they change at the behest of the emperor’s needs and not actually creating a standard for what certain grade levels should learn at any given part of their academic careers.

So instead, I decided to pull out the hardest questions from their predictive assessments (I’m a rebel) and help them understand how to do it. Let me show you. I took a problem like this:

Irregular Polygon

and actually made it more multi-dimensional.

Irregular Polygon 2

Nothing too shabby, but it’s interesting to see the kids’ faces of bewilderment. At first, only the more spatially inclined got how to do it. Then, as I started to show how the whole picture is nothing but a bunch of rectangles, the rest of the kids who were paying attention from the previous week’s lesson on the properties of a rectangle (it took a little reprogramming) were able to decipher the code on their own (for those not geometrically inclined, a hint: all parallelograms, including rectangles have 2 pairs of parallel and equidistant sides).

Of course, then I got really off-the-wall and gave them a similar figure and gave them completely off dimensions. Just to use the diagram above, the 10 was where the 7 is, and I mixed it up with some decimals, so the smart-asses in the class quipped, “But Mr. V, why didn’t you just put the measures where they belonged?”

I laughed, and like the quixotic teacher we’re used to seeing in the movies, I retorted, “It’s not about what you see. It’s about the idea behind what you see. Yes, the lengths are totally mixed up, and you’re already distracted by the mis-measurements. But if you understand that the longest length is the sum of the 2 shorter lengths parallel to it, then this should be no problem for you. Same goes with the the widths. Now, on the test, none of the lengths will be drawn to scale, so are you going to break out your ruler for every problem? I really hope not. I’m just making it obvious that you need to use your arithmetic skills to figure this out.”

Of course, one or two of them were still incredulous, but the rest understood. I was making them think for once. They couldn’t take anything for granted, and that’s important. Instantly, I found buy-in. I even differentiated by breaking the kids up in groups, and handing them cards with specially-made problems. Then they took it upon themselves to break out some chart paper and deliver how they did it to the rest of the class. I allowed for it only if I got to ask them critical questions to each and every student. Done and done.

jose

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The Message

by Jose on December 4, 2007 · 5 comments

in Uncategorized

Rap in ClassroomPart 2 of The Hip-Hop in the Classroom Series:

The mainstream rap of today continues to perpetuate the same themes of sex, drugs, and violence we’ve heard almost ad nauseam since the ealy ’90s. Yet, the gems that often redeem and exalt rap into the hood’s champion comes from the oft-ignored B-sides of the most popular rappers in the hip-hop culture. Just like looking for an alternative curriculum to what the school or district supplies a teacher with, it takes a little research and some word-of-mouth to find some of these gems.

It’s stereotypical to just use math raps in the class or try and analyze the similarities and differences between rap and poetry, but I’m using them anyways as an ice breaker. We can kick up the creativity a bit. My first example comes from the prolific Slick Rick, arguably the greatest storyteller of all time. In the excerpt I’m providing next, Slick Rick demonstrates a descriptive narrative (for the rest of “Children’s Story” off the album The Adventures of Slick Rick, click here):

“He said ‘I need bullets, hurry up, run!’
The dope fiend brought back a spanking shotgun,
He went outside but there was cops all over,
then he dipped into a car, a stolen Nova,
Raced up the block doing 83,
crashed into a tree near university,
Escaped alive though the car was battered,
rat-a-tat-tatted and all the cops scattered,
Ran out of bullets and still had static,
grabbed a pregnant lady and out the automatic,
Pointed at her head and he said the gun was full o’ lead,
he told the cops “Back off or honey here’s dead”
Deep in his heart he knew he was wrong,
so he let the lady go and he starts to run on … “

The rest of the song probably set the precedence for rappers like Ghostface Killah, whose “The Forest” and “Shakey Dog” all borrow elements of heavy chronicling from that rapper.

The next verse comes from Jay-Z (as if you didn’t know that was coming). This was buried deep within Blueprint 2, panned by many critics as a waste of an album. However, this song stood out for its dual metaphor of the street dealer and the soldier in Afghanistan / Iraq. Check the verse.

“You lost him mama, the war’s callin him
Feel it’s his duty to fall in line with all of them
He’s a soldier
Rose through the ranks as the head of your household
Now its time to provide bank, like he’s supposed ta’
Now just remember while he’s going to November
There’s part of him growing up
His shirts soaks up your tears as he holds ya
Your heart beatin’ so fast speeding his pulse up
Yeah I know it sucks,
Life ain’t a rosebud
A couple of speed bumps, you gotta take your lumps
Off to boot camp, the world’s facing terror
bin Laden been happenin’ in Manhattan
Crack was anthrax back then, back when
Police was Al Qaeda to Black men
While I was out there hustling sinning with no religion
He was off the wall killing for a living …”

Because of this and many other verses, Jay-Z has been put on a celebrity watch list by the FBI, and it catered especially towards those who speak out against the government. So not only is this good for English / Language Arts, it’s also good for Social Studies / Civics class.

Moving on, Rakim, who whenever there’s any rap conversation I’ll namedrop a plethora of times, once said that he raps in sync with jazz’s tempo. In the verses, he’ll rap, but even within the lines, there are secret rhymes, alliterations, and assonances you’d miss if you weren’t grooving so hard so the song (for the rest of “Follow the Leader” off the album Follow the Leader, click here):

“Follow me into a solo
Get in the flow – and you can picture like a photo
Music mixed mellow maintains to make
Melodies for MC’s motivates the breaks
I’m everlastin, I can go on for days and days
With rhyme displays that engrave deep as X-rays
I can take a phrase that’s rarely heard, FLIP IT
Now it’s a daily word
I can get iller than ‘Nam, a killin bomb
But no alarm – Rakim will remain calm
Self-esteem make me super superb and supreme
But for a microphone still I fiend …”

Even more new school rappers not known for their math have moments of weird brilliance that we can use. The next verse comes from Cam’ron, whose zany rhymes have usually taken me aback, but this time, he might have gotten it right (for the rest of “The R.O.C.”, click here):

“Dude think doublin’ is turnin’ 5 to 8
I turn 8 to 20, 20 to 100, 100 to 1000
That to 100,000, in front-a housin’ …”

We can plot these numbers on an x-y plot, or compare the rate in which his competitor that doubled from 5 to 8 did versus Cam’ron, who had a much higher rate of productivity. Then, we can look at the consequences of drug trafficking and if the long-term benefits work in favor of drug pushers. It’s a long-term project, but it’s also cross-disciplinary.

Yet, with lyrics like this, and a deluge of other rappers’ lyrical dexterity, it poses the question of the literary legitimacy of hip-hop’s music and takes a proverbial dump on it. Granted, we can’t depend on Soulja Boy, Plies, or Akinyele to give us lessons on anything besides sexual degradation with half-written-on-napkin raps, but the list of popular rappers whose lyrics we can use in the classroom (depending on grade level) grows just as much.

Just like any genre of music, rap has a diverse pool of rappers from which to start your lessons. But the most important part of using rap in your lessons is that the discussions and lessons stay authentic and honest. What I mean is that the teacher conveys that they want the student to think critically and use rap as a vehicle of communication rather than to disparage it because it’s the “black kid’s” music.

And to think, I didn’t even get into Immortal Technique, Common, Eminem, or Queen Latifah.

Your thoughts?

jose, who knows someone’s gotta bring up Nas, Lupe Fiasco, David Banner, Trick Daddy, or KRS-One …

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Penny Harvest Math

by Jose on October 16, 2007 · 5 comments

in Uncategorized

PennyAh, I’m taking a breather from politics. Not that I don’t like duking it out with different individuals on my beliefs, but because I like going over a variety of topics that find I find interesting. It was good to see how many of you responded to the last 2 posts (“A Synopsis on the Road Less Wanted” and “AfterNotes from the AfroLatino Immigration Discussion“). Just to add a little bit to those discussions, check the recent study about the positive correlation between health and class size. The smaller the class size, the healthier the kids are. Teachers especially see this since it actually improves their own health when a few kids are absent. Of course, this also means that those who can afford to have smaller class sizes are usually the healthier children. And those with the best health care tend to be the healthiest. This isn’t just me talking out my rear; it’s real research.

In any case, a little note about an extracurricular activity I’ve taken on. I’m now the Penny Harvest Coach for my school, and so far, it’s been a multilayered effort. For those of you unaware of what a Penny Harvest event looks like, it just means that for a month, a school collects pennies and tries to raise money for charity. If you get over a $1000, you get to give it to the charity of your choice. Pretty cool. My tactic for collecting the money is by weight because it’s much easier to do that than actually count all the money collected. Capiche?

After all the red tape and the unprompted suggestions from several colleagues and the lack of reading memos, I had even more work to do to personally discuss and inspire the teachers and kids to participate in this activity. Everything from “We’re not just trying to beat the school, but the city” to “Now, what weighs more, pennies or quarters?” That’s what got me thinking: what if I could make a series of portfolio projects that will segue this community service with their education? Ca-ching!  I hear pennies.

My first portfolio project uses concepts of powers of ten and finding the relationship between the decimal place and power of ten. It’s useful for all grades. I think I used something like this:

Mr. Vilson recently asked his homeroom to contribute to the Penny Harvest this year. On October 9th, his class contributed only $1.26 in pennies. Every week since then, the amount of the money increased tenfold. Figure out how much money his homeroom will have by Thanksgiving (6 weeks).

Then they get this fancy chart they can use to calculate their figures, and then they have to figure out what the relationships are in the value. This works for 7th and 8th grade too, when it comes to powers of ten, and scientific notation. The 6th graders, I’m sure, will enjoy the activity. I’ve also used Penny Harvest as a means of understanding what a million looks like. Now that most of my kids have some understanding of what a million looks like, they can conceptualize what all those pennies we collect will look like too.

Enough of my geekiness. More hardcore on Thursday.

jose, who just needs a little breather …

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