A short post today. This week J introduced me to the ‘MyScript Calculator’ app.
It’s a rather nifty app that converts freehand writing into mathematical calculations and solves them. It is available for most formats of smartphone and you can visit their website here.
These examples from the website show what it is capable of doing – I’m sure there is a lesson here somewhere.
If you haven’t had a chance to take part in the rather excellent ‘How to Learn Maths’ online course at Stanford University, led by Jo Boaler – don’t worry!
Get reading the rather brilliant book ‘The Elephant in the Classroom’ instead. You’ll find yourself going ‘Yes, I know what you mean!’, ‘I’d never thought of that …’ and ‘I need to try this out’, before you’ve even finished it.
A nice easy question to start the term with:
You go to the supermarket to buy your favourite shower gel (or other product). It usually costs £2.99. You have three £1 coins ready, when you notice the price has temporarily been reduced to £1.
What is the most money you can save?
Hint: Think of future gain
Solution:
It’s not the obvious £1.99 saved – that is instant gratification.
It is actually better to buy 3 bottles:
Saving = Actual price x 3 – Reduced price x 3
Saving = £2.99 x 3 – £1 x 3 = £8.97 – £3 = £5.97
If you spent the whole £3 (which is one bottle plus one pence), you get a long term saving which is worth far more, for just 1p more.
Teaching the concept of delayed benefit is rather useful, especially if you are trying to encourage open investigations or looking at time spent on personal revision.
Wow … September again and many people will be meeting new faces for the first time. Learning names, setting out classroom rules, figuring out who’s got all the textbooks you need …
Made using origami paper.
Back in July I made Kusudama flower balls with a couple of classes. It occurred to me then what a great ice-breaker they could be. They’d also be a nice maths club project.
Definition of Kusudama from Wikipedia
You will need:
Activity
Notes:
Thank you to @c0mplexnumber for the original inspiration for this activity.
Have fun folks!
As the summer break draws ever closer, thoughts go to all those jobs you never got the chance to do in term time. Here at the Maths Sandpit thoughts turn to quality control and effective blogging. To maintain the standards of the site, the Sandpit is starting it’s summer break a little earlier than most schools.
Thank you to all those who’ve visited the site since 16th February. There have been 124 posts, which is equivalent to more than two years worth of weekly posts. And more than 12,000 views!
There will some posts over the summer so keep coming back to check out ‘The View from the Sandpit’.
Normal service will resume on 1st September.
Ms KMP
I’ve just spent the morning doing a cross curricular primary reward project with gifted and talented Y5/6 pupils. I was working with two colleagues from Science and Art. We were doing SAM, rather than STEM. It was brilliant!
We made bouncy balls, bounced them in flour and cocoa powder, videoed the impacts, photoshopped the crater pictures, compared width of impact crater with the height dropped (scatter graph), calculated the speed of impact of the balls on Earth and on the moon – we even did the Jaffa cake phases of the moon. Our scientist gave us the correct terminonology and we did it correctly, unlike the memorable advert:
It did take us more than one jaffa cake … ahem, I mean attempt… to get it right. For the sake of accuracy, you understand …
How do you keep the pupils’ focussed on a peer’s explanation in a big classroom?
If a pupil is solving a problem on the board at the front, some of the class see this as an opportunity for low-level disruption. They often don’t see it as inappropriate behaviour and dealing with it can be off-putting for the pupil at the front. What to do?
Equipment
A class set of named lolly sticks
Lolly sticks aren’t a new idea, but this is a different way to use them.
Activity
Set out the lolly sticks in teams face down on the desk, depending on the number of questions.
So an activity with 5 questions and 30 pupils would have 6 pupils per question. It doesn’t matter if the final team needs more pupils.
Set the first question. Give the class thinking time.
Randomly select a team by turning over one lolly stick. That person comes to the front to answer the question. The rest of the team are lifelines – if the team leader gets stuck, he/she can turn over a lifeline and ask for help. At the end of the question, the unused sticks remain face down.
Next question? Select the next team.
Why it works
No-one knows who will be called upon to contribute next, so everyone (who hasn’t yet contributed) must pay attention.
Hint
If your last team is short on lifelines, they can select any face down lolly stick.
I’ve used this with Y11 set 3/4 and it worked a treat, with everyone focussed on the task.