Those Geometry classes also had fun tackling some logic puzzles as we started talking about forming proofs and deductive reasoning. I was very thankful that my wife and I were able to visit her grandparents last weekend, and while there her grandmother gave me a book titled "The Brain Game." The book has 27 intelligence tests "that will reveal your unique abilities" like an IQ test.
When I first saw it, I instantly thought of the possible problems and tasks I could pull from for the students, and thinking about the proof lessons coming up, I was look at the logic tests for some gems. One of the puzzles involved blue wombats, and it was a nice starter before we started proving angle relationships.
Moving to the Algebra 1 classes, I tried my hand at implementing a 3 Act task today with a Pepsi Points task that I also found using those wonderful curriculum maps. I am looking forward to talking with the kids on Monday about the court case involving the person who tried to redeem pepsi points for a jet, and today they were really into estimating how much things cost and starting to figure out how many points it would take to get the jet. This was also a fun task because I got to talk about my experience with my dad riding in his van and stopping on the side of the rode to pick up pepsi bottles for the caps, so that he could redeem the points for stuff.
The fun did not end with Algebra, thankfully, as my seventh graders got to work on a problem about designing a model of the solar system, a problem about McDonalds, and a problem about the Curiosity Rover. They were working with exponent properties and scientific notation, and problems about space and the McDonald's serving 1% of the world's population seemed to fit. I loved showing them pictures of some really cool planets and stars, and they were really interested in how the Curiosity Rover landed. Infecting kids with the wonders of space explorations is my favorite past time. The fun again came in when I was able to relate the problems to experiences from my life. They seemed to enjoy some funny stories from my childhood when my mom worked as a manager at McDonald's, and I would play around the store in the freezer, in the drive through (scrounging for dropped change for a small fry), and wearing the headsets listening to the drive through orders. One particular group of girls found the idea of a car coming through the drive through while I was looking for change quite funny.
I started thinking after having the chance to share the stories about myself to my students that being able to connect these problems to my life really seemed to help make the work we were doing more meaningful. The students weren't just working through problems from some foreign book, or even good problems that aren't related to anything. Not only were students given an opportunity to work on interesting and challenging problems, they were able to see these problems as something more than just a math problem. Through telling my little stories, I felt that I was able to make these "real world problems" more real.
Moving to the Algebra 1 classes, I tried my hand at implementing a 3 Act task today with a Pepsi Points task that I also found using those wonderful curriculum maps. I am looking forward to talking with the kids on Monday about the court case involving the person who tried to redeem pepsi points for a jet, and today they were really into estimating how much things cost and starting to figure out how many points it would take to get the jet. This was also a fun task because I got to talk about my experience with my dad riding in his van and stopping on the side of the rode to pick up pepsi bottles for the caps, so that he could redeem the points for stuff.
The fun did not end with Algebra, thankfully, as my seventh graders got to work on a problem about designing a model of the solar system, a problem about McDonalds, and a problem about the Curiosity Rover. They were working with exponent properties and scientific notation, and problems about space and the McDonald's serving 1% of the world's population seemed to fit. I loved showing them pictures of some really cool planets and stars, and they were really interested in how the Curiosity Rover landed. Infecting kids with the wonders of space explorations is my favorite past time. The fun again came in when I was able to relate the problems to experiences from my life. They seemed to enjoy some funny stories from my childhood when my mom worked as a manager at McDonald's, and I would play around the store in the freezer, in the drive through (scrounging for dropped change for a small fry), and wearing the headsets listening to the drive through orders. One particular group of girls found the idea of a car coming through the drive through while I was looking for change quite funny.
I started thinking after having the chance to share the stories about myself to my students that being able to connect these problems to my life really seemed to help make the work we were doing more meaningful. The students weren't just working through problems from some foreign book, or even good problems that aren't related to anything. Not only were students given an opportunity to work on interesting and challenging problems, they were able to see these problems as something more than just a math problem. Through telling my little stories, I felt that I was able to make these "real world problems" more real.
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