Twitter and GoogleDocs

I must admit to being a little complacent with my tweeting and blogging of late. It’s not all my own doing, we encountered a little Media Imposed inquiry over the weekend as the excitement of a new iTV was very quickly replaced with the feelings of loss and confusion as our Internet was taken down. For three days we were without contact – my husband and I were left with little else to do than go for a walk!

As the new router box was delivered, three days later, needless to say we were all ecstatic and I was inspired. After reading @tombarrett ‘s post recently in edtech.ch I prepared myself for some Google data. Recognising I am not as popular on twitter as @tombarrett I decided to prepare my lesson a few hours earlier (the night before in-fact – hoping to hit time zones). On awaking I was overwhelmed with such a positive response. Oh; the powers of Twitter. I already was excited by the ways and benefits of a Twitter PLN, but now I think I’ve become evangelical. I skipped into work this morning with 98 responses to the survey and my smile a mile wide.

As I explained my process to the kids, I asked them to think about the types of questions they might like to ask people from all over the world – if they could – the realisation was extraordinary. I watched their eyes pop and their jaws drop as they truly began to realise where the data was coming from. They were inspired to create their own surveys – coming soon. They will be blogging tomorrow about their thoughts and ideas.

Thank you to all who contributed to their inspiration. Without you their lesson would have been just another collection of ‘favourites’. As I work with the children I realise that they have a preconceived notion of data as something relating to favourites, my challenge is to help them shift their understanding into the real world. Help them to realise and begin to understand how understanding and analysing of data can help to develop and build deeper understanding of concepts.

I’ll keep you posted, but in the mean time, how do you help your kids make the connections between collecting data to foster deeper understanding of a concept, rather than simply understanding what people like, don’t like or when their birthday may be?

Maths, UOI, inquiry that just keeps on giving

You know you've stumbled across a great inquiry when the learning just starts to develop a life of it's own. Our planter boxes just keep getting better. Accuracy of measurement, comparing informal with formal notation, converting between inches and centimetres, length, width, height, volume, capacity and the list continues to grow.

After drafting then building their paper models, determining the volume in cm3 the students were ready to order the wood. All those who were building with wood that is, some have chosen to use clay. My visit to the hardware, in very broken German, managed to have all of the students requests fulfilled - five pieces of wood per box, three different sizes for each box. Quite a language lesson!

All this was planned and anticipated, fantastic discussions, motivation levels extremely high.

What I hadn't planned for were the discussions which have begun today as the students compare weight to dimensions. Each group knows clearly how much soil they want - in cm3 the problem is that soil is sold by the litre. How many litres of soil do you require to fill your 8750cm3 box? This discussion will lead nicely from the clay kids as they need to determine how much clay they need just to make the pot - sold by the kilo.

Collaboration, problem solving, collegiality, inquiring minds ... connecting maths to our unit of inquiry: the form and material of an object affects its use. Connecting oral procedural texts as students now begin to produce shared videos (diary room style) of the learning process ...

Thank you to my colleagues as we talked through bringing measurement into our real world. Thank you to those who shared their thinking with the group and helped transform the beginning of an idea into a rich and rewarding inquiry based learning experience.

Class Poll

Sometimes writing a blog post can be as simple as asking a question and getting everyone to give a simple answer. Example: What was your favorite part of the field trip? Scott: the giraffes Mary: the elephants or What did you learn today in reading? Melanie Holtsman's next blog challenge.

I polled my kids today. First, a bit of background.

The maths inquiry is going great guns, the kids are using all the language of measurement, they are converting between informal and formal measurements, they're converting between inches and centimetres. They've constructed scale models of their planters and tested them out on the windowsill to make sure they fit, won't fall off, that sort of thing. They've gone back and double checked the volume of their planted because "7,680 cm cubed sounds like way too big". It's all great learning but did they really want to carry on?

This afternoon I gave them the choice; to actually build their box or not, individual choice. 100% yes. Hmmm, now on to the next challenge, where do we find the resources?

Inquiring into Measurement

Well. I pitched my inquiry idea to the colleagues this morning and it lead to a fantastic conversation, needless to say it's a much better plan now. Rather than asking the kids to develop plans for fishtanks, sand boxes or swimming pools which will never be put into play, we're going to design and build planter boxes for the windows. This was an idea which grew from our discussion about connecting maths not only to the real world but to our unit of inquiry also - our central idea is "The material and form of an object affects it's use". Hello, makes perfect sense.

So, here's the task: Design, plan and build a planter box which can be stored on our windowsill. You will need to consider what materials you will use, how much of them you will need and how much soil you will require. You will need to prepare an accurate and detailed diagram as the plan for your planter box. All of the finished boxes will have a new home on our window.

How do you provide opportunities for kids to develop conceptual understandings in meaningful, real world situations?

My Life as a Mathematician

This week's prompt from Melanie is: Your Life as a Mathematician. When you're not at school are you still a mathematician? How do you use math to solve problems in your daily life? How did you use it today?

If you asked me 6 months ago the answer was unequivocally, “I am not”. As I looked around for ways to engage students in inquiring into maths concepts, rather than teaching them, I realised that we are all mathematicians. Perhaps not in the traditional Archimedes or Adam Spencer sense, but we all certainly use maths in our daily lives. As I looked for ways to improve my teaching of maths I forced myself to find reasons for knowing or understanding these concepts. If we aren’t going to use it in the world, or build on the understandings for some future purpose, than why learn it in the first place?

I started with the obvious … How much money will this cost, sometimes estimating, how much change will I receive? Walking through the isles of the supermarket shelves, which should I buy the big pack for $20 (56+6 dishwashing tablets) or the smaller one for $10 (22+8)? Calculating the time it will take to drive from home to the movies, what time should I leave to arrive with plenty of popcorn buying time to spare?

Then I moved on … I recently started running and wearing a Nike+ band, what distance did I run today, how long did it take me, how many calories was that, how many calories did I consume yesterday, am I in front or behind? Recently I’ve started twittering and blogging the stats I’m collecting are fantastic, Redesigning the kitchen and choosing the tiles I have been challenged with shape & space, patterns and measurement all in one – no wonder it is so hard to choose.

Grade five are working on volume and capacity, so I’m looking for areas in my own life where I am forced to apply these conceptual understandings: filling the fish tank or the pool, buying sand for the sand box, adding enough water to the saucepan to allow for the displacement of my artichokes (they were both enormous and delicious).

For me, the challenge to develop ways to facilitate inquiry has been resolved by looking for these concepts in the real world (which in turn becomes the challenge). From these real world examples I try to develop tasks that will give the students an opportunity to uncover the mathematical concepts through their discussions as they work collaboratively together. I agree it is hard, not to mention time consuming, but rewarding when you see the kids make sense of their learning. Learning about mathematical concepts in these ways, and understanding them myself, allows the students to develop their own purpose and application of the concepts. I always wondered how maths would be relevant to me outside of school – hopefully my students will develop this understanding while they are also developing the understanding of the concepts. Making the learning so much richer.

How do you use maths in your real world?