Ms. K
How Can You Teach Angles with Effective Manipulatives?
AngLegs Plus, a fabulous new math manipulative, I discovered last year when looking for a way to teach angles. These take the place of the teacher made card board pieces with brads. AngLegs Plus are colored plastic pieces that snap together and extend or retract. Where the pieces meet together common angle measures are labeled in small print such as 45, 90, and 120 degrees. Not only can students build angles, but they can also build regular and irregular polygons. What makes these manipulatives so impressive is that students can maneuver the sliding pieces to see the relationship between the length of sides and the angle measures. If you teach angles and polygons and you have the money in your budget, definitely buy AngLegs Plus. You will not be disappointed.
Has Your State Adopted the National Common Core Standards?
The common core standards were not developed by the federal government but by states contrary to popular belief. These national standards were developed from the most rigorous state standards to help students compete in the global economy. Having national standards will help states share curriculum, professional development, lessons, tests, and the like. Most states have already adopted these standards to gain a share of the 3.4 billion that the Obama administration offered to states that signed up by August 2nd, 2010. Although many states have adopted the national common core standards, they will not be immediately implemented. The core standards will be implemented in transition. The only states not to have adopted the common core standards yet are Alaska, Texas, Virginia, Maine, Nebraska, Wisconsin, North Dakota, Montana, and Washington. For more information on the commom core standards visit: http://corestandards.org/frequently-asked-questions and http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/education/21standards.html?_r=1.
Which Pencils Are the Best Value?
Upon sharpening many types of pencils in the classroom and having the sharpener gnaw them down to the stature of a small golf pencil, I have discovered the pencils with the worst and best value.
First, I will describe pencils not worth investing in. Pencils from a dollar store and holiday pencils etc. are hardly worth buying because the sharpener wears itself down on the plastic coating and cheap wood surrounding the lead. The lead is too soft to show up well on notebook paper, and the wood splinters too easily on these types of pencils.
I have tried Dixon pencils, Oxford pencils, Office Depot pencils and a number of others of which I don’t recall the names, and these do a fair job. However, they don’t produce consistent sharpening results in which one does not have to resharpen due to breakage, splintering, or the lead not being centered.
Pull out your wallet for Ticonderoga and Papermate. Ticonderoga pencils have soft, non smeary erasers, sharpen perfectly without breakage and splintering, and write darkly. Papermate rivals Ticonderoga in that Papermate pencils have dark lead and they are made of quality wood, which eliminates splintering breakage. In contrast, Papermate erasers are hard compared to Ticonderoga and sometimes cause smears. Papermate pencils sell for much less than Ticonderoga and with the savings, you could buy cap erasers. Most often before a school year begins, Papermate pencils are on sale for a substantial savings over Ticonderoga. In my opinion, Papermate pencils are the best value pencils.
How Can You Make Extra Money Without an Extra Job?
Teachers can take a step off of the pay scale and into the free marketplace when they find Teachers Pay Teachers, a website community for all teachers to sell their resources. On the website http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/, teachers are rewarded by selling quality materials they produce for their students . Finally, teachers can be paid for their resourcefulness through the products they create within the classroom. Teachers able to sell their digitally created items as well as used classroom materials. When an item sells, teachers are immediately notified through email. The website does, however, take a hefty 40% commission off of the teacher created materials one sells plus a flat fee of 30 cents per transaction. Teachers receive their earnings quarterly through PayPal.
Do You Need a Creative Idea for a February Bulletin Board?
- This is a picture of a bulletin board used for displaying student work of a volume activity. The candy box has brown snap cubes in it which were used to represent chocolate pieces. Students built their own “candy box” with grid paper and measured its volume with snap cubes. The nets below the red heart display are “candy boxes” students built. They measured the volume using snap cubes. They wrote the answer in cubic units on the back of their box. While students are passing by, they can look at the nets and figure out the volume. There is an answer key beside the boxes so students can check their work.
Valentine Volume - Interactive
- Bulletin Board
Three Ways to Incorporate Valentine’s Day Fun with Math
On Valentine’s Day it is difficult to engage students in instruction which rivals anticipation of Valentine parties. Here are a few ways to incorporate fun with math instruction.
1. Give students a cotton swab with a dab of Vaseline. Tell them to smear their lips with the Vaseline. Have them kiss colored cm squared grid paper. The colored paper helps the Vaseline to show up better. Then tell them to choose their favorite lip print and find its area in square cm. Have students find the length and width of their kisses. Students can also measure their kisses in inches with a ruler. Arrange kisses on the wall in order from least to greatest area so all can see for added fun.
2. Give each student a box of candy hearts, and have students find the fractional amounts of each color. Students can build a bar graph, pictograph, circle graph, etc to represent the colors in the box. Further, you could incorporate probability by having students predict which colors of candy are most likely to be drawn from the box. Then have students do a probability experiment in which they pull a candy from a bag without looking. Have them record their results on a frequency table.
3. Cut out different sized paper hearts and use candy hearts to find the area of the paper heart. Which student had the heart with the largest area? The smallest area.
