Saturday, November 26, 2016

Getting in Shape

Over the past couple of weeks, we have been exploring Geometry in our math block, covering angles and attributes and exploring nets and nonagons (and other -gons!).  Below are a couple activities we tried.

SeeSaw app in action
my shape has 4 right angles. 4 sides, 2 lines of symmetry and 4 vertices

SeeSaw App
This app is like a live bulletin board where students can display their work for others to see.  Peers can make comments (give descriptive feedback) about the work to further learning.

After adding the app from the ChromeStore to our individual Chromebooks, students were challenged to 1. take a photo of a quadrilateral in the classroom.  This proved not so challenging as we only had squares (Starburst candies) and rectangles (tables, books, charts).  Not even a trapezoid table!  But we persevered...

Next, and after uploading the picture to SeeSaw from their camera roll, the Ss were encouraged to use the 2. drawing tool to show attributes.  These "smarties" didn't care that they had never used this app before and began colour coding their math thinking (which made it easier for anyone seeing their work to distinguish ideas).

With pictures in, I forced the Ss to try putting their thinking into words...to explain what they had drawn on their pictures.  They had the option of 3. captioning the picture or recording their explanation with the   4.audio tool. 

The magic happens in the comments!  The Ss needed to apply what they knew about quadrilaterals and suggest ways their peers could improve upon their work.  Here are the comments Marie Claire received for her work (in the above photo):

 
Math
 Allyssa LangfordChristian DushajGabriella StabileGloria JuliusJesse HamiltonMarieClaire JuntillaMax Masood-Luca
 
Gloria Julius I like that you put the lines of symmetry. Maybe next time you could add dots on the vertices so it's more clear. 
Dylan Gilliam I like how you showed the lines of symmetry
Jesse Hamilton I love how you showed parallel lines, vertices and the angles. What if you could show more about your shape? What would you do? Roberta Brooks Marie Claire, I appreciated how you colour coded the work which made it really easy to read. I think I would like it if everyone did that! 

I ❣ this app!

Grandpa Tang's Story 
by Ann Tompert

Grandfather Tang and Little Soo create a story using their tangrams about two fox fairies who have the ability to change into the shapes of any animals they choose. Includes informational section about the ancient Chinese puzzles called tangrams.

After reading the story aloud to the Ss, I projected the animals that were created in the story and challenged them to use their own set of tangrams to re-create as many of the animals as they were able in 10 minutes. Can you guess these animals that appear in the story?



Manipulating the tangrams was a bit of a challenge at first.  Ss are so used to seeing shapes in an upright position; rotating and flipping the shapes to create the animals was not their first instinct.

I then projected another challenge where Ss were to try and create a shape using a set number of pieces.  Each tangram piece was given a point value to help them to narrow down their choices.  This may have led to some confusion but the Ss who love numbers were certainly aided with this bit.

An example of one of the challenges was to create a square using 2 pieces that were worth 10 points.


The Ss who like numbers looked for combinations that made a total of 10 and saw it was the yellow and green pieces, the red and light blue pieces, or the orange and pink pieces.  By manipulating the two pieces together, they could quickly decide that the 2 large triangles would form a square.  Some Ss knew the answer had to have two congruent shapes or a square was impossible.  This particular example will come into play when we discuss area of rectangles vs area of triangles.  If Ss remember that 2 triangles make a square (which is a type of rectangle) AND they already know that the area of a rectangle is l x w, wouldn't the area of a triangle be half of that (since half of a square is a triangle)?

Let us know in the comments how you get students in shape for geometry!

~MissBrooks




Friday, November 11, 2016

We Took (Virtual) Field Trips to Indonesia and Thailand

We just completed our second field trip with Brandon Hall from Learning Around the World GEOShow.

Minus the jet lag...
and without passports...
and no crossing of time zones...

We went to Thailand and Indonesia without even leaving our classroom and it was beyond expectation!

Our first VFT was to see the Asian Elephants in Thailand
The engagement and level of enthusiasm from almost every child was high.  These webinars allow the participating classrooms to interact with Brandon through Twitter, playing Kahoot and chatting (either face to face as an on-screen guest or through the chat feature by typing questions).  Field notes were provided for the Thailand trip and students scribbled to get as much information as possible.  This helped us make the leader board in the Kahoot challenge at the end of the webinar.

4th Place finish in the Kahoot challenge
Gloria's notes evidence her learning and engagement
throughout the hour long webinar.
For the second field trip, which was to Komodo, Indonesia, we signed up to be on-screen guests.  This was the first time for the kids to participate like this and luckily, Brandon controlled the mute button to block our chatter from the other participating classes!  Some of the students had read an article ("Dragon Alert") as part of their guided reading groups this week (happy accident) and they were eager to share some facts about Komodo dragons, a cannibalistic creature whose only predator is itself (and humans, but it's illegal to hunt).
Here's a tweet I sent out during the VFT to Indonesia.
Experiencing these trips has made the study of biodiversity (one of four strands in Ontario Science curriculum) interactive, engaging and interesting for everyone in our classroom.  Go check out if one of their virtual field trips applies to some level of interest in your classrooms.  It will blow you away!

~MissBrooks













Friday, November 4, 2016

Which One Doesn't Belong?

While scrolling through some education tweets this week, I came across a math site called "Which One Doesn't Belong?" found at wodb.ca.  On the site can be found puzzles with a picture in each of four quadrants.


Shape #1
To launch our geometry unit, I thought to start with the above puzzle.  This would let me know where the students were in terms of attributes of polygons.  Which one doesn't belong?  Here are some thoughts from the grade sixes on Day 1 of Geometry. 

Bottom Right:
--it's grey and others are white--Allyssa
--seems smaller than the others--Andre
--it's the only one with a right angle--Gabriella
--perimeter of 69 cm

Bottom Left:
--no equal sides (Scalene?) --Gloria

Top Right:
--this is a hexagon and the others are triangles--Gabriella
--parallel lines--Max
--all equal sides
--only has obtuse angles--Gloria

Top Left:
--this one sits on its vertex but the others are on an edge--Xavier

What I liked about this site is that it doesn't post answers!  Part of growing in math confidence this year is allowing for time and making mistakes and not having just one "right" answer.  This is thrilling for a math learner and educator.  If you look at the sophistication of some of the answers, they vary from beginner to higher end.  BUT EVERYONE CAN PARTICIPATE!

Take Allyssa's observation that the one shape is grey.  She is not wrong.  She has contributed to the group's discussion.  She's participated.  This is a PLUS.  The next time we did a puzzle, a different student made the observation about the difference in colour which led to the wonder "does the colour of the object affect the math?" to which the students replied "no, but she's not wrong".  SUCCESS!

Something else that came from this puzzle was the math language.  Students seemed to dig deep into their "backpacks" of knowledge to come up with innovative and original observations.  You might notice the lines of symmetry drawn on the shapes because that also became a discussion as the class worked together to discover the lines of symmetry for each polygon.  One student wondered if the lines of symmetry had to do with the number of sides.  Since three of the shapes were triangles, that logic meant that all the triangles had 3 lines of symmetry.  BUT, only the triangle with EQUAL sides had 3 lines of symmetry.  A great discovery!

Try WODB in your class and let us know what you see happening in your class.

~MissBrooks