Skip to main content

Home/ Diigo In Education/ Group items tagged War third

Rss Feed Group items tagged

taconi12

fractions idea bank - 141 views

  • Fractions are as easy as pigs
  • One way to help students to understand the basics of adding and subtracting fractions (denominators must be the same; add/subtract the numerators; DO NOT add/subtract the denominators) is to teach the students what the parts of a fraction really are: numbers and names. This also helps combat the frequently-taught but incorrect idea that a fraction and a ratio are the same. A ratio may look like a fraction, but it is not a fraction.
  • FRACTIONS ARE AS EASY AS PIGS What is 2 pigs plus 3 pigs? 5 pigs (Write as a fraction: 2/pigs + 3/pigs = 5/pigs) Notice, we do not end up saying the answer is 5 horses.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • The top of a fraction is a NUMBER: 1, 2, 3, etc. The bottom of a fraction is a NAME: half, third, fourth, etc. We can add and subtract numbers. We cannot add and subtract names.
  • Fraction Blackjack
  • Ask each student their "denominator." Don't give it away. Ask each one until one finally says their name. Continue through the room... Their name is their denominator. When you practice adding and subtracting fractions with like denominators, actually say "pigs" instead the fraction name. Then say, "Instead of pigs, we are using ..." and let them answer with the appropriate denominator. It is fun when doing subtraction to say, "If we have 5 pigs and eat 3 pigs, besides a stomachache, what is left?"
  • The transition to unlike denominators is automatic. If the names are not the same, you can't add the fractions. 2/pigs + 3 horses is still 2/pigs and 3/horses (unless we discover a "common denominator" -- a common name: farm animals). Once the students know they must have a common name (denominator) in order to add or subtract, they have a reason to learn about common denominators. By the way, I always begin common denominators without worrying about the Least Common Denominator (LCD). Once they can find a common denominator (multiply the denominators), add or subtract, and then reduce, they can be led to finding "easier" denominators to work with. Students who have too much difficulty with LCD can still get the correct answer; they just have more reducing to do. Those who can find a lower common denominator have less reducing. This is a very basic rendering of "Fractions are as easy as pigs." AWP, 10/12/00 on teachers.net math board
  • Denominate means: to name Political parties nominate (name) their candidates. Religious denominations are identified by their names. The denominations of money are the names of the coins and bills.
  • One game that my students enjoy the challenge of is Blackjack 1. You need a set of fraction cards per student (or you can make them from index cards.) The same rules as Blackjack apply. Instead of trying to get to 21, they want to try and get close to 1 without going over. With this game they practice addition and comparing -- it's great. You can also make it more challenging or bring in mixed numbers with Blackjack 2 or Blackjack 3. (Blackjack 2 means to try to get as close to 2 as possible without going over.) I am not sure where to buy fraction cards. I have one set that I received when I took over a classroom. However, I have always had the students create their own sets and we used them for several games. I gave each students a set of index cards (3 1/2 X 5) and they wrote the fractions in pencil so they couldn't be seen through the cards. These are the fractions we included: all fractions with a denominator of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, and 12. (To challenge the students you may want to use the 7, 9, and 11 denominators as well.) I also had the students include 2 0's such as 0/3 and 0/4 and two 1's such as 3/3 and 4/4. Each game required two sets of cards, so I had the students write their initials in the corner of their set so they would get a complete set back after the game.
  • games
  • I remembered some
  • other
  • Fraction War Fraction War with the fraction cards: It is just like the card game of War, but with the fraction cards instead. This game helps students to compare fractions and encourages them to use number sense in comparison before using the algorithm of making equivalent fractions. Memory Memory with the fraction cards: It is just like the traditional "Memory" game, but any equivalent fractions are considered a match so 1/2 would be a match with 2/4. This game helps them to identify equivalent fractions. You can also play this game with fraction to decimal equivalence by making a set of decimal cards too. Fraction/Decimal Bingo Fraction/Decimal Bingo: The students have game boards with decimals on them. You call out fractions and if they have the decimal equivalence they can mark it on the board. Kimberly, 5/31 and 6/1 on teachers.net math board
Ian Jenkinson

Searching the Web - 7 views

  •  
    Weblinks on issues of interest to humanities studies.
marcmancinelli

Think Again: Education - By Ben Wildavsky | Foreign Policy - 31 views

  • But when the results from the first major international math test came out in 1967, the effort did not seem to have made much of a difference. Japan took first place out of 12 countries, while the United States finished near the bottom.
  • By the early 1970s, American students were ranking last among industrialized countries in seven of 19 tests of academic achievement and never made it to first or even second place in any of them. A decade later, "A Nation at Risk," the landmark 1983 report by the National Commission on Excellence in Education, cited these and other academic failings to buttress its stark claim that "if an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war."
    • marcmancinelli
       
      US has long been mediocre or at the bottom of international comparisons, but it's not a zer-sum game
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • J. Michael Shaughnessy, president of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, argues that the latest PISA test "underscores the need for integrating reasoning and sense making in our teaching of mathematics." Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, claims that the same results "tell us … that if you don't make smart investments in teachers, respect them, or involve them in decision-making, as the top-performing countries do, students pay a price."
    • marcmancinelli
       
      People use crises to advance their own agendas...
  • But don't expect any of them to bring the country back to its educational golden age -- there wasn't one.
  • According to the most recent statistics, the U.S. share of foreign students fell from 24 percent in 2000 to just below 19 percent in 2008. Meanwhile, countries like Australia, Canada, and Japan saw increased market shares from their 2000 levels, though they are still far below the American numbers.
  • And even with its declining share, the United States still commands 9 percentage points more of the market than its nearest competitor, Britain.
  • A 2008 Rand Corp. report found that nearly two-thirds of the most highly cited articles in science and technology come from the United States, and seven in 10 Nobel Prize winners are employed by American universities. And the United States spends about 2.9 percent of its GDP on postsecondary education, about twice the percentage spent by China, the European Union, and Japan in 2006.
  • But over the long term, exactly where countries sit in the university hierarchy will be less and less relevant, as Americans' understanding of who is "us" and who is "them" gradually changes. Already, a historically unprecedented level of student and faculty mobility has become a defining characteristic of global higher education. Cross-border scientific collaboration, as measured by the volume of publications by co-authors from different countries, has more than doubled in two decades.
  •  
    A great perspective piece on American education compared to the world.
1 - 3 of 3
Showing 20 items per page