Remembering Israel

Two years ago I was invited to go with the Hasten Hebrew Academy to Israel.  We took eighteen students on a three week trip to Israel.  I was able to visit Jeruselum for two nights on my own.  During this time I spent a day at the Israel Museum.  I came upon a James Turrel installation out in the sculpture garden boarding the modern art wing of the museum.  Turrel creates amazing space using light.   He uses proportion, scale, and light to describe a place.  Here is the entrance to his space in Israel.

My favorite paint at the Israel museum. A Rembrandt. I think it was called Saint Peter in prison.

Another Architecture Challenge

This activity is all about defying gravity.  Each group is given the same odd assortment of materials and is told to build the tallest structure possible.

Given:

- fifteenPopsicle sticks

- a roll of masking tape

- 3 paper clips,

- a dozen toothpicks

- a plastic cup

-11x14 piece of construction paper

They had 50 minutes to design and build.  This tallest tower was over 2 meters tall.

This structure proved to stand the tallest.  This year a new twist to these constructions has evolved.  The tasks each have a set amount of materials that can be used.  Students often ask for more tape, or more paper and in the past I have stuck to the "given".  This year I let students vote if they want more Popsicle sticks or more of one of the other materials.  We had 4 groups working on the towers pictured here.  Excellent debates and lobbying would follow.  It added a political game to the process which I plan to keep incorporating.  Fun stuff.  

Building Long Bridges

We did this activity in an elective class called Architecture.   This is a really fun way for students to work together to build structures.    This time they were trying to build the longest bridge structure.   I gave them a variety of items, paper, masking tape, aand one piece of paper. Four groups spent 50 minutes building.  Here are some pictures.  The longest was about 5 meters long.

This student has used her tape to create a really long grunge.  It measured over 5 meters long.

This activity is great for teams of two students!

Two recent problems.

Ok...this was a mathcounts problem that we could not get for several days.   We finally were albe to find a few ways to solve it.  Do not scroll down to the hint, unless of course you would like to see the hint.  I will not post the solution.

Hint: draw a line from H to I, and then another line from D to F.  Go after it with some right triangle trig!

Problem #2

Then here is another photo of a problem I do not have a solution for.  Why should vehicles that get better gas mileage get to park closer to Best Buy?

So I like to hang around 101questions.com.  Dan Meyer has inspired me to look for sharper hooks, often in images or video.  Most importantly they make students care.  I use quite a bit of his three act problems.  

Which problem would you rather discuss?

Dan Meyer and INDY NCTM regional conference 2014

Great conference.   Go to experience Dan Meyer and one of his three acts live.  Here he is...super tall by the way, over 6'4".  Fun problem.  Interesting discussion on how to find the most exact area of a circle.   Is it easier to measure the diameter of a circle or the radius?

Fractal Forest

Fractals can be quite a lot of fun.  They often encourage students to explore patterns and create their own patterns.  They are fit for STEAM.  

Each week I have the sixth grade for a period called Problem Solving.  We have been working on fractals....both two dimensional and three dimentional.   Here is my board after we tried to make fractal trees.

Here is a picture of a Brocoflower...one of my students brought it in to share.  It was found at the local farmers market.  We fiddled with this  guy so much in class I decided not to eat it.  Seems a great combination...broccoli and coliflower? 

Student Reference Sheets and ISTEP

What we give students.

Indiana just published a new math reference sheet.  I do not know which part of this sheet bothers me the most.
1) The odd mix of volumes of solids, with inconsistent use of "B", for the area of the base.  But wait, look at the formula for a cone, here the area of the base is spelled out.  I think this takes away from the general understanding of how we can go about finding the volume of a solid.  Maybe it is just me.

2) Just the abc's of Pythagorean Theorem.  We need more here, it falls short of the story it tells about all triangles.  

3) What are those = signs doing with those conversions!!  The only one that is correct is 1inch=2.54cm.  Precision indeed!!

I am all for leveling the mathematical playing field by giving students the formulas on SAT, ACT, ISTEP, ECA exam....But what Indiana is giving the students is ambiguous, not true, and vague.
Here it is.