At the heart of this meeting was the following table, shared by math educator Howie Hua:
What do you notice? What patterns do you observe?
Setting the Table
Tag: problem-posing
What do you see?: Attention & imagination in math
Sometimes CAMI meetings have a mind of their own. This one followed a direction we didn’t expect!
We started with a question about this image:
The catch? We wanted to spark our creativity by exploring the world of wrong answers.
What is the Area? WRONG ANSWERS ONLY
Continue reading “What do you see?: Attention & imagination in math”Sarah’s Passing Drill
In another edition of revisiting problems from the CAMI vaults, at this month’s meeting we went back to further explore a number pattern we first looked at in January 2017 (Carl’s Basketball Problem).
We started off discussing WHAT IS SIMILAR? WHAT IS DIFFERENT? looking at these four expressions:
Making and Testing Conjectures: The Diagonal Problem
Draw a rectangle on grid paper and draw a diagonal. Is there a way to predict the number of squares the diagonal will pass through?
I have been thinking about MP3 from the Common Core, specifically about how to get students to make conjectures, to test those conjectures and to refine their conjectures when it turned out they were not always true. I was also thinking about student perseverance and helping them not get too frustrated. I’ve done some activities like Marilyn Burns’ consecutive sums problem (see additional resources below), but I want something that feels messier and a little more unwieldy. Continue reading “Making and Testing Conjectures: The Diagonal Problem”
CAMI Roadshow: COABE 2016
Facilitating a meeting in Dallas, while live-tweeting with teachers in NYC, we explored a visual pattern to model what our teachers’ circle is all about.
This CAMI Roadshow involved about 35 teachers in a ballroom at the Sheraton at the 2016 COABE conference and 3 additional teachers who were back in NYC, participating through Twitter.
We wanted to maximize teachers’ time working on the problem but we also wanted to convey some important norms about how we run CAMI meetings, so we began with an ice breaker. The instructions were simple. First, everyone sat down (including the facilitators). After that, the only goal was that there be 5 people standing and the only rule was we had to do it without talking. Continue reading “CAMI Roadshow: COABE 2016”
Three-Act Math: Probability in Craps
What are the odds of winning at craps? Is craps a fair game? What’s your chance of making the point? A three-act math task inspires some questions in probability.
Act One: Launch
We began by watching a clip from the move, A Bronx Tale. (Be warned: there is some… colorful language in this clip)
Three-Act Math: The Royal Flush
This was the third time CAMI tried out using a 3-Act math task. This one is called Royal Flush and is organized around the probability of a poker hand in Texas Hold’em.
Introduction
Do you play cards? What kinds of cards do you play? What do cards have to do with probability?
Three-Act Math: Super Stairs
For our second three-act math task, we learn it is sometimes just as interesting when mathematical models do not work and we have to figure out why.
This week, CAMI continued learning about Dan Meyer’s three-act math model by working on the Super Stairs problem. In keeping with the three-act framework, we started the meeting by watching the short video
below a few times and then posing some questions. Continue reading “Three-Act Math: Super Stairs”
Three-Act Math: Pyramid of Pennies
We talked about problem-posing and inspiring student curiosity in math as we tried out a three-act math task created by Dan Meyer
To start off the meeting, in pairs we discussed – “Real life math”: What does it mean to you? In your classrooms?
Problem-Posing with Visual Patterns
We can get conditioned to approach visual patterns in a particular way and jump immediately to the problem of looking for the nth figure (# of squares, for example). Beginning with an open, problem-posing approach can help break us out of that habit and really open up the mathematics.
Usha led us through an exploration of a visual pattern, building off of the work we’ve done at the last two meetings. She used problem posing to enable us to have greater ownership on the problem and to widen options to explore.