Gateway Practice Quiz… the realization that I have lost some skills.

This Monday in class I took a gateway quiz, thank goodness it was just a practice quiz! These quizzes exercise the knowledge of basic math such as addition, division and decimals just to name a few. The paper was handed to me and I went “OH Crap!” there were long division problems on the page in front of me, I have not seen those since 7th grade maybe 8th grade. So I sat there for a moment and thought to myself OK I have 20 minutes I can do this and much to my surprise once I started it all came rushing back to me… this number goes into this number 3 times subtract the product from the previous number and bring down the next number and repeat. WOW! Have not had to do that in a long time. Much to my surprise I did not get any of them wrong what I needed to do was brush up on my multiplication skills.

We these days are so dependent on calculators I remember getting my first one in about 8th grade and not having to figure out a problem by hand since then. So many skills that I have lost since then like basic multiplication. So what did I do when I went home? Practice those problems over and over to get them repeating in my head. It worked! They came back quickly just like a lost language that you used to speak as a child with a little practice it should come back to you in no time.

Being so dependent on calculators is not a good thing. I think as a teacher if I end up at a higher grade level I’m going to make up quizzes that you cannot take with a calculator to keep those times tables fresh in my student’s heads. Even with addition, subtraction and division. Because, these are the foundations that math is built on in my eyes and without knowing these like the back of your hand math is going to become very complicated.

Math Tricks

For the longest time we don’t even realize that we are using algebra as a young child.  The most fun I think math can get is when you use number tricks do them and then show the students how they work. For example we did this one in class this week the final answer no matter what number you start with will be nine. 1. Select any number  2. Add 4  3. Multiply by 6  4. Subtract 9 5. Divide by 3 6. Add 13 7. Divide by 2 8. Subtract the number x this works out to be the following formula.

6(x+4)=6x+24

6x+24-9=6x+15

(6x+15)/3=2x+5

2x+5+13=2x+18

(2x+18)/2=x+9

x+9-x=9

These math tricks are a good way to get students thinking. I think activities like this would mak a great warm up to starting the math portion of your class or a fun way to end a “boring” math lesson. This is a great website that I found it has a few fun number trick games that you should try! Let me know what you think of them in my comments! link

Fibonacci Numbers

Today in class we learned what Fibonacci Numbers are, a set of numbers that starts with a one or a zero and continues at the rule that the next number is the sum of the two previous numbers. This sequence is also called the Golden Ratio which is 1.618 and is equal to in nature 1,618. For example on the human body the forearm is equal to 1.618 of the hand and the ratio of the lenth of the nose to the width of the mouth. These numbers are patterns that occur in nature as well, for example the petal and seeds of a daisy.

The following link is a good webside that explains what the numbers are and how they work awell.
Clike Here!