teachers learning math together
Many of us are familiar with the 3, 4, 5 right triangle, and maybe the 5, 12, 13. Do you know any others? Is there a pattern to these triples?
As we came in the room, Eric asked us to place a post-it with our name on a voting spectrum he’d drawn on the board, ranging from “Never” to “This morning” under the statement, “The last time I thought about multiplication”.
As we settled in, Eric shared his goals for the meeting. He’s been working on a lesson for students combining some work he’s been doing on area models with a problem that has been consuming him for weeks. Continue reading “Keep it in the Family (with Pythagorean Triples)”
The CAMI Roadshow did a workshop at the CUNY NYC Adult Literacy Institute, January 22, 2016
Tyler and Solange facilitated a problem-posing with visual patterns activity, bringing the exploration from our February 2015 meeting to a wider audience.
Continue reading “CAMI Roadshow: 2016 CUNY NYC Adult Literacy Institute”
A look at the slip slide method of factoring polynomials
Cynthia started by showing us Kahoot, a free and easy way to run a quiz game in class with students buzzing in through cell phones. Kahoot allows you to create surveys and surveys. Students load Kahoot.it through their cell phone and are asked for a PIN. Once a student enters a PIN, they join the game.
Using number pyramids to practice adding signed numbers leads to a surprising discovery.
Jane started the meeting by telling us that her class has been studying signed numbers recently. She has been looking for creative ways for them to understand adding and subtracting signed numbers. One example was to imagine taking away negativity as the same thing as making someone happier.
A big thank you to Turning Point for hosting us this month and raising the bar for all future hosts. We started with a tour of TP’s building and saw their classrooms, offices, and rooftop deck (!). Evidence of great student work is everywhere with student posters and presentations on the diverse topics of supply and demand, classified ads for housing, and dice and probability. It was wonderful to see such a beautiful, well-established community-based education program with full-time staff. And they provided refreshments!
For this meeting, we looked at Pascal’s Triangle, since it came up in discussion at the end of the October craps meeting Continue reading “Pascal’s Triangle”
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.
We began by watching a clip from the move, A Bronx Tale. (Be warned: there is some… colorful language in this clip)
Our work on this month’s problem led us to the beginning of a larger exploration of a very curious repeated loop in a certain sequence of numbers.
This month’s problem comes from the 2015 Stanford-Math League Tournament Individual Questions for grades 6 & 7.
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.
Do you play cards? What kinds of cards do you play? What do cards have to do with probability?
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”
The CAMI Roadshow worked with teachers at the 2015 NYC ABE Conference
