New Orleans Learning

I'm currently in warm and sunny New Orleans for the NCTM National Conference. I spent today with a fellow teacher going to a variety of workshops, but found the last workshop of the day to be the most interesting and enjoyable. It focused on the importance of teaching students multiple methods for computations. 

With the shift to Common Core there has been some concerns about the way students are taught how to complete basic computations - like adding and subtracting. The Common Core focuses on students developing an understanding of these basic skills - I think this is great! Students are taught different methods, such as breaking numbers apart or drawing a model, to develop this understanding before being taught the standard algorithm. The workshop I attended today emphasized how these different methods relate to each other and how they can be used to explain the standard algorithm we all learned in school. 

Some time was spent during the workshop talking about how we would go about solving different problems. For example, the problem 24 x 6 was presented. My first thought was to multiply 20 x 6 = 120 and 4 x 6 = 24 and then add 120+24 and get the solution 144. Another person in the workshop explained that he multipled 25 x 6 = 150 and then subtracted 6 and got 144. There were other methods explained, but what was most interesting is that no one said "I took out paper and pencil and used the standard algorithm." 

In our day to day lives as adults we don't use the standard algorithms we were taught in school; we use number sense and mental math to find the answer. We need to teach our students how to be able to do this same thing. We need to help our students develop number sense so that they too can find the easiest way to complete computations in their heads. By teaching them multiple methods for these basic computations we are helping them to develop this number sense so that they can effectively and efficiently work with numbers in their heads. 

A Little Late...Happy Pi Day!

These last few weeks have been quite hectic at school so I'm just getting around to writing a post about our Pi Day celebrations from March 14th! All of my middle school students are fascinated by the value of pi and the fact that it goes on and on forever and never repeats (even those who aren't studying pi yet!). So March 14th - Pi Day - is quite an exciting day in my classroom.

This is their favorite poster in my room! If you look very carefully, it lists as many digits that can fit on the poster in the background.

We started the day by having two of the eighth graders read a chant over the intercom during announcements to let the school know that today we are celebrating Pi Day.

A copy of the chant read during announcements.

 

 

And then begins the fun Pi Day activity! I found on Pinterest last year a great idea for making Pi Day Bracelets. You buy 10 different color beads and assign each color a digit. As the students go through the digits of pi, they use the corresponding color bead to put together a bracelet. Even though my 7th and 8th graders made bracelets last year, they were still very exciting to make bracelets again this year - in fact, they asked if we were doing it again this year! The 8th graders made their bracelets on their own, but the 7th graders helped the 1st graders make bracelets before making their own. It was great to see the 7th graders work with the younger students and explain to them why pi was such an important numerical value. The 6th graders worked with the 4th and 5th graders and made bracelets with them. Again, it was great to see my students working with students from a different grade level.

 

Here is my Pi Day Bracelet. We used initial beads to represent the decimal point.

Here are some of the color-number match ups that students used to make their bracelets:

3 = red

1 = orange

4 = green

5 = purple

 

Overall, we had a great Pi Day and the kids loved it! I love being able to celebrate math in a fun way with my students.