Human Ordered Pairs!

We have been learning about the Cartesian Coordinate Plane recently! If you remember this post , we've finally reached this section of math. I purchased A Fly on the Ceiling from amazon sometime last week to prepare for this new topic. Thanks to previous experience with read alouds for kindergarteners and 1st graders, the kids were really engaged with the story. After spending a little time modeling how to find an ordered pair, everyone wanted to try! They had a blast.

While some kids were too cool for school, most of the students did some plotting and had fun with the activity. I gave them post-its with ordered pairs to plot. Most of the classes are working on quadrants now.

Human Ordering Integers!

We have been working very hard lately on unit 3. This unit is about children beginning to understand negative and positive numbers as well as the contexts in which they play a role in the real world. Here is a short clip of one of the fun activities we've been doing recently in class (I must admit, even I've had a blast playing with the kids)!

Instead of having students order integers on a sheet of paper or on a worksheet, just grab a few index cards, think of your students and decide what integers/numbers you want them to order! This is really good for seeing where students are. Positive integers > positive decimals > positive fractions > negative integers > negative decimals > negative fractions. I've found that my students are good until we toss in those nasty decimals and fractions. Practice makes perfect. Eventually they get it, and this is fun for all! 

Mr. E's Mathemagicians

After spending a lot of time thinking I've finally figured out the keystones to my new program, the "Mathemagicians". Mentioned in the previous post, here is the wheel:

How it works

• The wheel will be based on 1 topic at a time
• The question difficulty will increase as students go around the wheel
• I'll start with multiple choice questions in order to check papers quickly w/ an answer key
• Each assignment is worth 500 points
• Must score 90% or higher in order to move to the next section on the wheel (at discretion)
• You can only move on by completing the work on your OWN. This does not mean that students who need help won't receive it, but in order to move along the wheel you must have completed an assignment with 90% accuracy by yourself. This is why there are 2 version of each assignment! Perhaps a student will spend their first time learning and making mistakes and practicing on version 1 of an assignment. Version 2 of an assignment can then be completed independently.
• You obtain a prize whenever you go around the wheel. There is no time limit for going around the wheel.
• When you go around the wheel, you start from the beginning of the wheel on the next topic.

Other
- Takes place during Monday and Tuesday lunch period (2 times per week, 8 times per month)
- Students can complete the wheel in 1 month for a particular topic.
- There are a total of 8 assignments per topic and 2 versions of each assignment
- If a student finishes early, they can help other students or complete version 2 of their assignment (not awarded additional points)
- If a student does not complete their assignment in that period, they can just store it in their folder and complete it the next day.
- Bulletin with rankings for the top 5 students that have the most points


Prizes
- Similar to the Gold Wii U prize, students can play PS3 during lunch time only (Wednesday)
- AMC Gold Experience Movie ticket or Regal Premier movie ticket
- $15 Barnes & Nobles gift card

Welcome to 2015! Happy New Year!

I am wishing all of my students, parents, staff, co workers, family and friends a wonderful and blessed new year! I have learned so much in 2014. I grew a lot personally towards the end of the year, I became a far better teacher, and I accomplished one of the biggest goals of my life.

I sincerely hope that 2015 will make us even more refined, give us more than what we started with, and help us grow in all areas of our lives!

I have plenty of things that I want to finish and start this year, but the ones related to teaching are:

A) Starting up my lunch program to help/offer students become more proficient
B) More signs around the room for students to refer to
C) Continue to be consistent
D) More opportunities for students to practice practice practice


1st post of 2015!

Math Posters

A few signs that I have been working on. There's been a lot of material to cover AND practice that I feel there's just not enough time for students to make these.

I have these being completed and hopefully in the classroom by next week so students can have something to refer to when it comes to previous work and topics we've covered in class.

The New Wheel of Improvement

Here is a picture of the old Wheel of Improvement:

I tried my best to make the boxes and image a lot more even but ultimately I wasn't able to get it.

After a lesson in using shift to straighten out lines (and being told that I could bring this to life via staples or kinkos) I chose to make a new wheel:

 I can't wait to introduce this to the students to see who is interested and wants to participate. I'll make a post later on what I've been thinking.  

Mario Kart 8 Christmas Tournament Results!

The Christmas tournament concluded on Monday December 22, 2014. I was sick with the flu the entire week prior, so we had to finish it on Monday. We started on Thursday. This all took place during lunch time. Congratulations to the top 4!

Results
1st Place -  N.H.
2nd Place -  J.B.
3rd Place -  O.G.
4th Place -  J.F.           

Merry Christmas!

Wishing all of my students, fellow staff members, and their families a Merry Christmas!

What I got:

- The missing package that USPS should have delivered a month ago (better late than never eh)!
- 2 Pitt Amiibos (ultra rare)
- 2 Marth Amiibos (discontinued)
- Captain Toad (Wii U)
- Kingdom Hearts 2.5 Limited Edition (PS3)
- $25 Gamestop gift card
- Kenneth Cole Reaction Desert Sun Shoes (Navy)


P.S. - I have a lot of things to post and it's been about two weeks but lots of things have been happening not to mention the semester recently ended. I'll be updating within the next few days!

The Hour of Code!

Today my students completed the hour of code! More information can be found if you click that link, but the gist is that students learn a little bit about javascript and the codes that program a computer and tell it what to do to bring some of their favorite games to life.

This is done in an entertaining fashion so students are also having fun. They progress through a series of levels in different games that teach the students different commands (move, turn, walk, run, repeat, etc). As they continue to progress through the games, eventually they are allowed to use many of the different coding blocks they've encountered throughout the levels to create their own game.

As someone who has logged in tens of thousands of hours on video games, I was very happy to see students and especially adults that shun games, realize that there is a lot of problem solving and critical thinking that takes place behind what they see on the screen. In other words, games are more than just "games". The students were VERY eager to try out the hour of code when they saw the "code stars" video:

After watching this video, the students were very excited to dive in. Unfortunately, the site was down all morning, and even throughout some of the afternoon because there were so many students doing the hour of code as per code.org's tweet:

 

This was unfortunately extremely frustrating as many of the better games (or at least the ones students were interested in) are found on their site. We used scratch.mit.edu and tynker.com as a backup, which turned out working very well because scratch allowed the students to play with all of the coding blocks at once. I really prompted the students to play around with the blocks on their own. Many of them were diving in and messing around with the coding blocks to alter the game. 

 

I will now be doing coding afterschool with the students starting today. I only have two signups, but that's fine as it's not everyone's thing. More people will come next week. It was only day one, and here two clips of what the students made:

 

 

Afterward we all were frustrated about the code.org site not working and the games loading at a turtle's pace, I decided to download the "Lightbot One Hour Coding" app, which works just like the games on code.org's site but has more challenging puzzles (they needed to work together to clear one of the more challenging ones). I can't wait to see what lies ahead!

 

The Mathematician's Wheel of Improvement

Going back to what I said in an earlier post I have finally finished creating a model of what I want in the classroom for students to be able to see where they are in terms of their improvement.

Something like this isn't bad so long as it's nice and colorful. Students can move their wooden pegs or something stick with their name on it attached to the edges of the board. What I may do is cut each section in half so there are more sections for students to move along. Prizes for each one. This can also be used for different topics, and the further you go along the board, the more difficult the problems of that topic become. I may not use it like that though. Hopefully I can create something in real life that looks like this with the help of the art teacher, as I want to start this program not too long after the beginning of next year.