• Home
  • Math 8
  • Algebra
  • Geometry
  • Portfolio
    • Reflects On Teaching
    • Maintains Accurate Records
    • Communicates With Families
    • Participates in a Professional Community
    • Grows and Develops Professionally
    • Shows Professionalism
    • Professional Growth Plan
    • Sample Lesson Plans
  • Cool Stuff
    • Take a Break >
      • Help
  • For Teachers
  • Contact Me
  Elizabeth Lynn's Math Adventure
Elizabeth Lynn's Math Adventure

First Week Back from Spring Break

4/22/2015

 
Friday: M-Step review
  • Go over first 9 problems, next 4 assigned
Thursday, April 16, PT: Sports or Music?
  • When kids are polling classmates, make sure they jot down initials or names 
  • Good opportunity to make connection to  Venn Diagrams
  • Assignment: first 9 problems in M-Step packet

Wednesday, April 15: Complete 3-Act Task, 25 Billionth Download and shoe laces
  • Shoe laces is a quick task that could work for homework
Tuesday, April 14 : Start 3-Act Task, 25 Billionth Download
  • Once again, kids loved a 3-Act
  • Quotes: "I'm not sure this is linear" and "Are you sure this is a constant rate of change?"  (FYI, it's not linear. It's exponential. So, it seemed linear at first...)
  • Make sure to let kids watch several minutes of the act 2 video, but don't forget the other resources that are available as PDFs
  • Kids will need phones, clocks, or some device to time.
  • Make sure kids understand they will need to come up with an answer as a specific time stamp.
  • Most teams solved using proportions, one team came up with a line of best fit. In both classes, we talked about the connections with these different approaches.
Monday, April 13
  • First day after spring break, many kids absent
  • Scavenger hunt of solving multi-step equations
  • I had two versions ready to go, which proved important since more than half the class needed the extra challenge.

The past month was CRAZY

4/16/2015

 
Bummer, my plan of keeping track of each day's progress in my Pre-Algebra classes was lost to good things such as:
1) Attending the MACUL conference in Detroit
2) Parent Teacher Conferences
3) Report Cards
4) Starting Future Prep 
5) Spring Break!
6) M-Step testing the week after spring break...

The best part of a good vacation is getting a new perspective on the world and how this affects what is going on in our own lives.  My family and I were fortunate enough to spend a week on Eleuthera, an out island in the Bahamas.  We stayed in a house in a small settlement, There was no running water for the first three days of our trip.  We immediately noticed neighbors drawing together to help each other out:

Out our kitchen window: 

A neighbor shares water from his cistern.
Picture

Girls bottle rainwater collected overnight.

Picture
The house we rented was on a cove, directly across from the town school, left empty after a hurricane left costly holes in the roof.  The picture below shows a picture that still hangs outside the main entrance. Students now attend classes in a temporary location.
Picture
These images stuck with me and got me thinking.  In this day and age, with the free schooling available on-line, everything should be available for anyone who is willing to learn. Of course, in developing regions, there is a need for a stable infrastructure and working technology, but these expenses are not expensive when considering the return on investment.

This thinking also lead to me to realize that NO ONE should be lecturing to a class in this day and age.  Excellent lectures from very reputable sources are available to anyone with access to the internet.  Students then have the ability to rewind and repeat any necessary topics as well as do this on their own time.  

We should be spending our valuable time with students helping them to be critical problem solvers, and building skills for them to learn the power of working with other people.  They can learn first hand the power of "the smartest person in the room IS the room." - George Couros. 

We should be inspiring them to pursue studies that that is interesting and relevant to their lives.  We need to be asking them what problems they want to solve, not what they want to be when they grow up.

I was fortunate to spend time at the end of my spring break going on a walk with my niece, Katherine Good, a recent PhD graduate at Northwestern school of Media, Technology and Society, who was recently hired by Miami of Ohio.  I love her fresh perspective on youth culture, combined with trends in education.  We were talking about some of my thoughts posted above and she asked if I had heard about hackschools.  I had not, but when watching the Ted talk she recommended, it all came back.  THIS is what we should be doing:

    Leaving a Trail:
    Mathematical Adventures

    We are on edge of something new and amazing. Where will this new path take us?

    Abbreviations Used:
    ISN= interactive student notebook
    WWK= words worth knowing
    PT= performance task



    Categories

    All
    Creative Process
    Elizabeth Lynn
    Future Prep
    Grows Professionally
    More Than Math
    Reflects On Teaching
    Shows Professionalism

    Picture

    Archives

    January 2019
    April 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    September 2015
    August 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    August 2013

    Categories

    All
    Creative Process
    Elizabeth Lynn
    Future Prep
    Grows Professionally
    More Than Math
    Reflects On Teaching
    Shows Professionalism

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    Creative Process
    Elizabeth Lynn
    Future Prep
    Grows Professionally
    More Than Math
    Reflects On Teaching
    Shows Professionalism

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.