Volume and Surface Area and THE END!

This week it was all about Volume and Surface area and this is what I did my final IBL on. I had the students match formulas to figures and name the figures then draw some on the boards and find their surface area and volume.
Its great to link back to other subject areas in this type of math I had the students find the volume of the world and they could have found the surface area as well but that is harder obviously since the earth has bumps and lumps on it!
This course had been alot of fun as you can see through my blog we have covered alot of material! My favorite was the last few chapters about geometry its so much fun.
Here is the link to the Voulme of the world article. Click Here

Area and Perimeter of Shapes

Area and Perimeter are two very useful things to know. You use perimter when you are shaping out a garden, the edge of a house, anything that you need to know the edges of. Think of it as taking a walk around the edge you will find the perimeter. Area though is a bit different its total measurement is going to be the inside of the object like the inside of a house or a garden. You need to know this to find out how much room you have inside the perimeter. This answer that you get will always be squared.
Here is a video to find the area of a square.

Here is a link video to find the perimeter of a square. Click Here
When finding perimeter you always add up the length of all the sides. But when finding area you need to follow the formulas for the certian shapes you are working with.
Follow this link and use the page numbers on the wesite to see the formulas for area and perimeter.
Click Here
The diagrams on the wesite are very helpful too!

Polygons and Quadrilaterals… Whats the Differece?

Well we all know that these are types of shapes but… Whats the difference between them?
A polygon is a closed plane figure bounded by straight sides. Now in Kid terms that is a closed shape that has all straight side. What is a quadirlateral though… it is any four sided polygon.
Here are two charts with the shapes of each group so you can eaily see the difference.
Quadrilaterals

Polygons

Teaching the difference to students is very important but also their relationship is important as well.

Basic Shapes!

In class we have now entered the what I think fun part of math is…. Geometry where you get to color measure and do all sorts of cool things with shapes and angles. but there are so many shapes out there that you have to rember how do you do it? Memorize, repetition, games all of the above would work so here are something that I found that would be helpful to remember and or teach the shapes to your “kids” (students) one day!
This a cute video that I found that helps you teach shapes to younger students.
Here are a couple links to games aswell.
Matching Game
Interactive Shape Game
Enjoy! Shapes are Fun!

Square and Cube Roots

I have always cringed when I have heard the words square root but not anymore. There is an easy short cut that I think is most helpful. Find all the prime factors and then take the pairs of two of the same numbers out for square roots and groups of threes for the cube roots. This has now made my life so much easier! I’m not afraid of roots anymore. But practice makes perfect follow this link to get some practice!
Hope this helps you all! This is something I’m for sure going to take with me when I’m a teacher!

Multiplication of Decimals

There is no easy way to teach this I think but one way of looking at it is making a shape then dividing that shape into the needed pieces for my example we will use this image and the problem of 3.2×2.4.

Following this formula we can easily compute the answer: Product = Area = 6×1 + 16 x 0.1 + 8 x 0.01 = 7.68.
1’s = Red .1’s = Blue and .01’s = green
I like this method but it takes some practice because you can easily see what is being broken down to get your answer. Especially when using different colors like this one has. This is the website that explains the problem is complete detail!

Fractions Are Fun!

FRACTIONS! (OH NO!) that seems to be everyones response when that word comes up. Really they are not hard at all. Adding and Subtracting are pretty easy as long as you find that common denomenator. but multiplying and dividing are a different story that people seem to get easily tripped up on. I have found a website that has a ton of games on it for fractions and other math games at different grade levels CLICK HERE
These games cover everything students will learn from Pre K to 5th grade this is a website I’m sure is valuable to any teacher!
Making sure that my students understand fractions when they leave my classroom and go on to different levels in their educations is going to be one of my goals as a teacher. I hated math as a young student and I’m going to personally make sure that I help each one of my students learn how do do it better!

My IBL Teaching Adding (+) and (-) Integers

Today I presented my IBL (Inquiry Based Learning) it went really well and is something that the students can take with them to their own class one day. The directions are as follows:
Materials: Colored tiles up to the highest number on your spinner.
A spinner that has a good amount of different numbers on it. (I used a 1-12)
A paperclip
A pencil
Procedure:
1. Place the paperclip with one end over the middle of the spinner.
2. Place your pencil with the point on the very center of the circle so you can spin the paperclip.
3. Spin to get your first number this will be your negative number. Designate it a color and lay out the amount of tiles for that number (i.e. if you have spun a 10 you would lay out 10 tiles)
4. Repeat step 3 and this number is your positive number designate it a different color. Place each tile right under the other tiles you have laid out,
5. Each pair of the two different colors makes a zero pair (1+-1=0 2+-2=0 and so on) take these pairs away and you are left with your answer.

Have the students keep in mind the rules for adding negative and positive integers.
1. When the negative integer is bigger than the positive then the answer will be negative.
2. When the positive integer is bigger than the negative then the answer will be positive.

Lattice Multiplication and Babylonian Numeration

Lattice Multiplication is one of the most confusing things that I have attepted to learn lately, besides my philosophy class. So, I have searched the internet to hopefully find somthing to help me learn how to do this and this is what I found. Cool math 4 kids really helped me understand how to do this it was put simply and colorfully, color coordinating each diffrent step. I get it now! This would be fun to do with a class and really get them thinking about diffrent ways to do math problems. But make sure they understand the basics first!

Babylonian Numeration has to be another one of the most confusing thing I have recently learned how to do. Lets take a closer look. They are in a base 60 numerations system meaning that their place value goes as follows 60^0, 60^2, 60^3 and so on. Also it is postitional meaning that each column is a greater value than then next.

As you can see there is no number for 60 this is because the number 60 is represented by the same symbol as the number one. I just gets placed in the next column over this is how you know that the symbol is 60.
This is the website that I found to be very helpful in learning all this. Babylonian Numbers

IBL and Second Test Preparations

Our second test is going to be this coming Monday. Since the first test we have covered Adding, Subtracting, Multiplication, Division, Factors, Multiples, Greatest Common Factor and Least Common Multiple. Wow that seems like a lot but it really is quite repetitive. A few of the rules for adding and subtracting are similar and the same with division and multiplication. This is why they are taught together the way they are. In order to be able to multiply and divide you need to know how to add and subtract. As I was reviewing all this material that we had learned I realized I have and IBL which is an Inquiry Based Learning activity. Where I come up with a short lesson or game to teach a concept. My topic that I was assigned is integers and within that I choose adding and subtracting positive and negative integers. I don’t want to say exactly what I am doing but it is going to be an activity that my classmates can use in their classrooms in the future.