Thursday, November 29, 2012

MIA Since September

Soooooo I've been MIA for a couple months. I didn't think it would be so hard to work and continue blogging at the same time....buuuuuut I was WRONG! Even though I haven't been blogging I have been continuing to read others' blog posts and I've been trying to keep up on twitter most days as well. I have also been creating lots of new resources and activities and foldables all influenced by the awesome mathtwitterblogosphere. I'm going to try to update within the next week or so with all of the new stuff I've been working on.


I just finished creating a quadratics scavenger hunt and I wanted to post it before I got sidetracked or something.


Basically, I have posted problems all around the room that the students have to walk around and work on. In the bottom right corner of each problem is the answer to another problem. Once they find the solution to the problem they are working on, they go look for that solution in the little box on the other sheets of paper.


I also created a "work page" to go along with the scavenger hunt so that it would be easy to see if students had the correct answers. I adopted this idea of a work page from Sarah over at Everybody is a Genius. (She has some REALLY great ideas!!)

Files can be found here:
Scavenger Hunt Work Page
Scavenger Hunt

I did this same activity with my geometry class a couple weeks ago and it went really really well. I love hearing them discuss math with each other! Hopefully the activity goes well today too!!


UPDATE: Students not only really enjoyed the activity and got a good review from it, but they were also using the foldable we had made earlier in the week! It made me so happy to see them utilizing their foldables and also happy that they found them useful. One student had been questioning why we were making foldables because he "doesn't like arts and crafts" but today he asked if they were going to be allowed to use them on the test!!! Finally buy in!









3 comments:

  1. Hi, Ms. Mac,

    I came across your blog via David Wees, and as a fellow mathematics educator I thought you might be able to help in spreading the word about an educational TV show for preteens about math that we're putting together. "The Number Hunter" is a cross between Bill Nye The Science Guy and The Crocodile Hunter -- bringing math to children in an innovative, adventurous way. I’d really appreciate your help in getting the word out about the project.

    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/564889170/the-number-hunter-promo

    I studied math education at Jacksonville University and the University of Florida. It became clear to me during my studies why we’re failing at teaching kids math. We're teaching it all wrong! Bill Nye taught kids that science is FUN. He showed them the EXPLOSIONS first and then the kids went to school to learn WHY things exploded. Kids learn about dinosaurs and amoeba and weird ocean life to make them go “wow”. But what about math? You probably remember the dreaded worksheets. Ugh.

    I’m sure you know math is much more exciting than people think. Fractal Geometry was used to create “Star Wars” backdrops, binary code was invented in Africa, The Great Pyramids and The Mona Lisa, wouldn’t exist without geometry.
    Our concept is to create an exciting, web-based TV show that’s both fun and educational.

    If you could consider posting about the project on your blog, I’d very much appreciate it. Also, if you'd be interested in link exchanging (either on The Number Hunter site, which is in development, or on StatisticsHowTo.com which is a well-established site with 300,000 page views a month) please shoot me an email. We're also always looking for input and ideas from other math educators!

    Thanks in advance for your help,

    Stephanie
    andalepublishing@gmail.com
    http://www.thenumberhunter.com
    http://www.statisticshowto.com
    http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/564889170/the-number-hunter-promo

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  2. It seems the link to the scavenger hunt (which I love!) has disappeared. The photo isn't even showing up anymore. Can you repost or perhaps share it another way? We'd love to use it next week with our kids. Thanks!

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    1. I've been out of the blogger game for a little while, so I haven't been back here recently. I just added the link to the file I used for the scavenger hunt if you still wanted it (though it's probably too late now!)

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