Group items tagged

"A puzzle by Sam Loyd. The red strips are twice as long as the yellow strips. The eight can be assembled to form two squares of different sizes. How can they be rearranged (in the plane) to form three squares of equal size?" Interesting brainteaser or problem that could act as a warmup. You could make these strips into manipulatives in Inspire or give the students physical strips to help with the visualization process. I'm sure there's math here, I just don't know what it is...

"The point here is that the technology made the conversation easier. Instead of creating 20 different examples of graphs and seeing what happens as each variable is changed, students were able to visualize the changes, both in the graph representation, and in the formula representation. When asked if they noticed anything after the "Point on the line" slider was changed, one student said they noticed the Intercept-slope form of the equation did not change. Another student responded to him with "that form of the line doesn't depend on which points you use.""

links to 75 different twitter forms- some interesting ideas 

a great resource for math assessment (both formative and summative)

"So, what's a leader and the school to do? How do we create "checks" to serve as guideposts toward success?  One potential way may be a novel idea in education.  Use teachers and educators that have experienced success in building instructional capacity to be "scouts" for other teachers and schools that are building capacity in a meaningful way.  What I mean by 'scouts' is that these individuals would be charged with working next to teachers and school leaders to develop and refine instructional capacity, but when "it" shows itself in the form of meaningful and intentional classroom instruction or PLCs that really improve student performance, the 'scouts' chronicle this story.  The 'scouts' dual responsibility is to not only share in the building of the capacity, but to also spread the good news when it's been accomplished. In doing so, the profession of teaching and learning, can begin to articulate and share in these guideposts toward meaningful capacity.  What's missing in this dynamic are the 'scouts' that are embedded in several classrooms, schools and districts simultaneously and use this experience to improve the work simultaneously.  What's crucial about this approach is that it isn't 'helicoptered in' and is never something done 'to' teachers.  The work of the 'scout' is to find, develop, and refine great teaching and learning and use this as a way to scale up the work so that more and more students can have access to highly effective teaching and learning. " This article, specifically this annotated section, really spoke to me and made me think about what the two main initiatives of our department - Henrico 21 and Reflective Friends, should look like. It shouldn't be something that is "helicoptered in" or "done to teachers," but instead should be about developing, refining, promoting, and sharing good teaching.

literacy ideas form HCPS fall PD Not sure if you ES folks have access to this

"Flows of Reading takes this process to the next level. We have created a rich environment designed to encourage close critical engagement not only with Moby-Dick but a range of other texts, including the children's picture book, Flotsam; Harry Potter; Hunger Games; and Lord of the Rings. We want to demonstrate that the book's approach can be applied to many different kinds of texts and may revitalize how we teach a diversity of forms of human expression.  We look at many different adaptions and remixes of Moby-Dick from the films featuring Gregory Peck and Patrick Stewart as Ahab to MC Lar's music video, "Ahab" and Pitts-Wiley's Moby-Dick: Then and Now stage production to works that evoke Moby-Dick less directly, including Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan and Battlestar Galacitca's "Scar." "

If any of these questions seem interesting, you may want to watch listen to the interview.  It reminded me of the Student-led TED Talks I saw at GAHS this spring. * What makes for a good TED talk? * Do you have an example of a TEDster who greatly improved their talk? * What makes for a really bad TED talk? * How do you deal with someone who does not think they need to improve? * Do you think there is a real value to the short-form, "TED Style" talk?

"Like his teammate Ray Rice, the Ravens linebacker was accused of beating up his wife. But in his case, there was no video." This really makes me think about how we could use this article, plus a variety of other documents, to discuss how various forms of media affect public/individual perception, feelings, emotions, decisions, etc. This is obviously a serious topic, and shouldn't be treated lightly, but feel like it could lead into some particularly deep discussion in a high school AP class, like AP language.