Middle and High School … from a Montessori Point of View
I needed a little icon of flames to show the methane from the landfill being burned for heat. So I googled, “svg flames” and ran into the free svg blog. Their svg images are aimed at scrapbookers, but they’ve got some good ones, and they’re free.
Cahokia‘s just one of almost a thousand sites around the world that UNESCO considers to form, “part of the cultural and natural heritage” of the world that has “outstanding universal value.”
It’s a remarkable selection of places, from natural geological wonders like the Grand Canyon, to biological preserves like Peru’s Manú National Park, to cultural landscapes like that of Bam, Iran.
The long, detailed descriptions of the importance of these sites makes the World Heritage List website is a remarkable resource for cultural and physical geography.
Take what you find interesting and turn it into something challenging, something provocative for someone else.
–Dan Meyer (2011): [anyqs] Hurricane Irene Edition
I’m looking for a good reference for project-based math. Where students face the real-life problems, and learn math as they try to solve them, yet covers the entire curriculum in a complete way.
What I’m considering right now is to swap in some of the real-life questions for some of the sections in the text that consist of rather pedantic word problems, things like: the sum of two numbers is three times less than the square root of the second plus the reciprocal of the first.
Instead, I’d rather do problems like determining the height of a tsunami, which can be treated in different ways depending on which math class you’re teaching, and tie into the science classes (like Physics) as well.
Dan Meyer is a proponent of the project based approach, and he has a lot of interesting problems on his blog.
A colleague recommended the Cool Math website as something she uses as a supplement for her students. There are some games for the younger kids, and lessons in pre-algebra through algebra for secondary students. I’ve glanced through a few of the pre-algebra lessons, and like them. They’re short, fairly clearly written, and have good diagrams.
The site is also friendly to homeschoolers and their parents, with a decent teacher’s area that outlines the author’s perspective on teaching math.
Their Survivor Algebra is an interesting approach to encouraging peer teaching by breaking the class into “tribes” and giving bonus points on tests if all members of the tribe do well. I’m not sure I like the extrinsic motivation of the prizes and test score bonuses but I think there might be some good aspects of this type of classroom organization in very large classes.
It’s a very interesting site that’s worth investigating.
I was trying to figure out how I could create a graphic organizer/mindmap to outline my math class that my students could access online. Even better would be if they could also edit the map online. That way I could set up the outline of my lesson notes and they could fill in definitions for vocabulary words. Mind42 (pronounced mind for two) allows just that. It’s free to use and allows you to link to or embed your mindmaps (e.g. pre-Algebra/Algebra) into other websites:
It’s almost perfect, all it needs is for you to be able to save the state of the map, with certain branches collapsed for example, or with a set zoom level. Right now the best way to explore the above map is to collapse all the nodes (use the second button on the lower left) and gradually expand them out as you go through.
I do think the style of the nodes and lines on the maps are elegant and make it easy to read. It’s also really easy to create the maps.
Apart from putting your maps to other websites, you can also print them out as pdf’s or images (png), or you can save the map itself in a format that other mindmapping software, like Freemind, can use.
I really like this website, and as soon as they add the ability to save zoom levels and collapsed nodes I’m going to try using it for my classes.
The National Academy Press has just made all of its publications free for downloading (as pdf’s). Of particular interest is the Education section which includes titles such as:
There are 20 books in the Education section, and while many of the books in the other sections are quite technical, there are some gems among the 4,000 available titles.
iCivics.com has an interesting set of online games that simulate the different branches of the U.S. government. It comes highly recommended by our local geography specialist.
“I think it’s my new addiction,” he said, “iCivics instead of Call of Duty.”
SPENT is an online game that challenges you to survive for a month while facing the choices of someone poor, living in the United States.
The choices are hard, but the game ties in well with the personal finance part of the curriculum, as well as the consideration of the wealth distribution.