Group items tagged

A friend shared this with me and it's a good read. It also summarizes the way that many of our teachers think, and could be an interesting article to share with a teacher and have a discussion about. Ultimate, I have a huge problem with the assumptions and conclusions that are being made here: "Now I'm not calling for abuse; I'd be the first to complain if a teacher called my kids names. But the latest evidence backs up my modest proposal. Studies have now shown, among other things, the benefits of moderate childhood stress; how praise kills kids' self-esteem; and why grit is a better predictor of success than SAT scores. All of which flies in the face of the kinder, gentler philosophy that has dominated American education over the past few decades. The conventional wisdom holds that teachers are supposed to tease knowledge out of students, rather than pound it into their heads. Projects and collaborative learning are applauded; traditional methods like lecturing and memorization-derided as "drill and kill"-are frowned upon, dismissed as a surefire way to suck young minds dry of creativity and motivation. But the conventional wisdom is wrong. And the following eight principles-a manifesto if you will, a battle cry inspired by my old teacher and buttressed by new research-explain why." Why are these seen as two completely different and opposing philosophies of education? That's my question. From my experience, teasing knowledge and understanding out of children stresses the hell out of them. They struggle to give you an answer initially, but when when you are unwilling to spoon feed them or provide them with a "drill and kill" answer, they finally make a connection. In doing so you show the students that their grit and determination has helped them gather a better understanding of the material and become a better student and learner in process.

I may write a decent response to this. She plays just about every false argument card in the book. It needs this treatment - http://www.al.com/opinion/index.ssf/2013/10/huntsville_teacher_common_core.html

This take down of Gladwell's dyslexia chapter http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=8123 makes for a similar parallel.

"In short, I'm constantly nudging students to think more deeply, but I never really challenge the dogmas of the Church of the Right Answer. I'm a good, rule-abiding cop, in a city where the rules are sometimes grossly unfair. That doesn't always satisfy me. Some days I don't want to nibble at the edges. I crave a more radical assault: a reformation, a new religion. Some days, I want a Church of Learning." For use in a faculty meeting/at a PD. This would be a great activity for IB schools when discussing how best to implement/discuss IB grades. - In HCPS/at Moody do we "worship" at the Church of the Right answer or the Church of Learning? What structures are in place at the school/county level that helped you generate your answer? - Are Moody's students and parents more likely to "worship" at the Church of the Right answer of the Church of learning? What evidence do you see to support you opinion? - What structures can we implement in individual classrooms/at a school level in order to preach the Church of Learning vs. The church of the Right answer.

""What's the sine of π/2?" I asked my first-ever trigonometry class. "One!" they replied in unison. "We learned that last year." So I skipped ahead, later to realize that they didn't really know what "sine" even meant. They'd simply memorized that fact. To them, math wasn't a process of logical discovery and thoughtful exploration. It was a call-and-response game. Trigonometry was just a collection of non-rhyming lyrics to the lamest sing-along ever. Some things are worth memorizing--addresses, PINs, your parents' birthdays. The sine of π/2 is not among them. It's a fact that matters only insofar as it connects to other ideas. To learn it in isolation is like learning the sentence "Hamlet kills Claudius" without the faintest idea of who either gentleman is--or, for what matter, of what "kill" means. Memorization is a frontage road: It runs parallel to the best parts of learning, never intersecting. It's a detour around all the action, a way of knowing without learning, of answering without understanding."

"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." "

"He cites Socrates's parable of the Egyptian god Theuth and how he invented writing, offering it as a gift to the king of Egypt, Thamus, who met the present with defiant indignation: This discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality."

"And yet no one I'm aware of has pointed out one of the more glaring (literally) problems with Jackson's Tolkien films, a problem that has become more evident to me with each installment. It's the choice of his own native land, New Zealand, as the backdrop for these British stories. The island nation of swooping hills and glistening peaks isn't merely an unfortunate choice-it's one of the worst options I can imagine." You could do some really interesting textual analysis stuff like this with comparing book characters and settings with their on screen counterparts. What holds up to the original? What has changed? How does that affect the reader/viewer or change the message of the story? There's plenty of options that students would get into - The Hunger Game Series, The Hobbit, you could even do comic book characters and their on screen counterparts.

"Ever wonder why we are made up of the particular ratio of elements that we happen to be made up of? The answer may be very simple. Perhaps we are that way because the universe is that way." This infographic reminded me of this H21 lesson (http://blogs.henrico.k12.va.us/21/?s=element+survivor&x=-1067&y=-38) and could provide a neat extension/summary for the lesson. After the students create their products and justify their choices, the teacher could show the infographic on this page and have the students compare and contrast their choices to the infographic and discuss "Why do you believe the human body contains these proportions of the listed elements?" Then, after an appropriate amount of time for the discussion, go for the big reveal and show the graphic that displays the abundance of each element in the universe.

"Here you will find one of the greatest historical atlases: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. This digital edition reproduces all of the atlas's nearly 700 maps. Many of these beautiful maps are enhanced here in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data-remarkable maps produced eight decades ago with the functionality of the twenty-first century." Large Database of Interactive historical maps

How can a game help students develop mathematical habits of mind? "Then we talked about the game for a bit, and discussed the "habits of mind" they had employed to figure out the game - noticing and wondering, guessing and checking, persevering, struggling productively, learning from mistakes without worrying about making mistakes (since they knew the only way they were going to make progress was to make mistakes and learn from them), and working together. We talked about how these skills are as important as any content they learn in their school classes, and how they can use those skills to make progress on math problems they're not sure how to solve. In fact, much of the math programming we did the rest of the year employed huge doses of Noticing and Wondering and generating ideas about math situations, or scenarios (a math problem with no stated question). Anecdotal reports suggest that by the end of the year, most of the students felt pretty confident that they could generate ideas about most math situations we handed them. Big win!"

This is the Newest webtool developed by Dan Meyer and Dave Major. Dan Meyer discusses the tool and task in a post on his blog here - http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=17503 I think this tool would be very engaging for students. Give them the task of finding the quickest route, and they will go nuts with it. I see two main applications for this particular tool/task: You could use this tool as an introduction to angles. Put it on the board, give the kids the task, and have them discuss how they would tell the ship captain to navigate around the buoys. When non-mathematical language and vocabulary bogs down the ship's progress, overlay a grid/protractor and introduce the idea of angles. Have the kids play around with the tool to come up with the quickest route. Discuss the result of small differences in angle measurement on the ship's progress (each degree above the necessary increases the amount of time lost). This could lead into a discussion on the importance of precision… This would be an easy task to make over if you wanted to talk about slope and writing equations of lines (Algebra I). You could overlay a grid on the board, The kids could draw the lines in to get the ships around the buoys, write the equations, then you could talk about how cumbersome the equations are and how ships are actually piloted and bring in the idea of degrees/vectors (direction and angle). Not only does this tool help to teach angles/vectors, but it's also a tool to get students estimating (angles AND distance).

"In my honors Algebra II class of sophomores, I always look forward to doing a culminating project on quadratics.  We start at the beginning of the chapter with introducing the project and having the kids break up into groups of 3 and 4 and start designing and building a catapult outside of school.  " This seems like a fun activity that could be enchanced by Logger Pro and/or Desmos (www.desmos.com). Logger Pro would allow the students to video a sample shot of their catapult and then break down the distance of their shot at specific intervals/times. Desmos would allow the students to graph the quadratic and place their catapult at the correct location in order to hit their target.

"Map of Life is a mapping project sponsored in part by Yale and the University of Colorado, Boulder. The map offers the option to see distribution of a species around the world. To do so, select a species from the species menu and placemarks for that species will be displayed on the map. Map of Life also provides the option to see a distribution of animals closest to you. To do that select "what lives near me.""

"How did Gladwell misconstrue it? Aside from not having copied the numbers from the actual paper correctly for his book? He says that there is a perfect correspondence between practice and the level of expertise a person attains. And you can't tell that from the paper. The 10,000 hours is an average of differences. You could have two people in any endeavor and one person took 0 hours and another took 20,000 hours, which is something like what happened with two high jumpers I discuss in the book. One guy put in 20,000 and one put in 0, so there's your average of 10,000 hours, but that tells you nothing about an individual. Now, Gladwell doesn't say there's no such thing as genetic talent. I think other writers are stricter than him. [Matthew Syed's] Bounce is a book that minimizes talent. Gladwell does say elite performers are more talented. One of the things that Ericsson criticizes Gladwell about is to say that 10,000 hours is some kind of rule. The paper just says that these performers by the age of 20, these performers have accumulated 10,000 hours but there's no where that says it's a magical number where that's when they become elite or anything like that. These people, by the time they go into their professional careers, have way more than that. That's just where they were when they're 20 as an average, not even to mention their individual differences."

"A good lecture is not merely a piece of writing read aloud. It is a performance art in which the sound of the lecturer's voice, his body-language, and the visual materials used are part of the performance." Interesting take on lecture. Could be a good read for teachers who consider themselves to be story-tellers and not necessarily lecturers. I agree that there is a time and a place for lecture in most subjects, but most of the "lectures" that I see (and plenty that I gave when I was in the classroom) don't follow these particular pieces of advice.

"There's a contest called Math-O-Vision, which your students should enter. Here's the premise: The Neukom Institute for Computational Science, at Dartmouth College, is offering prizes for high school students who create 4-minute movies that show the world of equations we live in. In 240 seconds, using animation, story-telling, humor, or anything you can think of, show us what you see: the patterns, the abstractions, the patterns within the abstractions." Two interesting things going on in this short blog post: 1. It introduces a contest which might be interesting for some of your students. I looked at the winning video from last year (linked in the post) and know that our students are capable of making something of similar quality. 2. The articles provides an interesting insight on math as a "product." This is quite an interesting discussion when thinking about how/why to assign this type of activity to your students.

"Confucius famously urged followers to heed the Golden Rule: do to others what you would have them do to you. However, he was also famous for another concept: jen. According to Confucius, a person of jen "brings the good things of others to completion and does not bring the bad things of others to completion." In other words, jen represents our ability to make the world a better place…but also a worse one. In this lesson we'll explore the concept of the jen ratio - the ratio of positive to negative observations in our daily lives - and discuss how it influences the way we experience the world. From violent video games to inspiring hip-hop lyrics, how does the Confucian concept of jen shape our lives?" This seems like a very engaging introduction to ratios. This is a paid resource, but the media for this lesson is free and available to all.

"When I get a taxi for the 15-minute ride from my office to the airport, I have two choices. I can hail a cab on the street, and pay a metered fare for the 4.6-mile trip. Or I can walk to the local Marriott and pay a fixed fee of $31.50. Truthfully, I'm always a lot happier paying the fixed fee. I'm happier even though it probably costs more in the end. (A congestion-free trip on the meter comes out to about $26.) Sitting in a cab watching the meter tick up wrenches my gut: Every eighth of a mile, there goes another 45 cents-tick ... tick ... tick." ...this provides interesting context for a math problem using linear equations. When is it worth it to pay the fixed fare vs. paying the per 1/8th of a mile rate? You could "3-Act" this scenario pretty easily: -Take a short video of a taxi fare display clicking upwards. Ask students to give you the first questions that come to mind. When the students ask for it, provide them with a photo of the rate schedule on the side of the taxi and your destination address.

"Since demolishing 78 traffic signals and installing 80 roundabouts, the northern Indiana city of Carmel has reduced the number of accidents by 40 percent and the number of accidents with injuries by 78 percent." There's a great lesson in here somewhere. I'm not sure of the exact structure for it, but here are some of my random thoughts. Let me know if you have others: Use Googlemaps and GoogleEarth in order to determine how many traffic lights are in a specific location in a county/city. Using the calculations in this article/video, how much could the county/city that you researched in Google maps have saved if they installed traffic circles rather than traffic lights. Extension - Research the number of accidents and injury/fatality stats for the area that you've researched. Using the calculations in this video/article, how many lives would traffic circles save in this area?

I've never been a huge baseball fan, but I do like data. This interactive display shows the total expenditure of every Major League Baseball team (from 1998 out until a few years in the future). Clicking on a team in the top chart will break that expenditure down per player and show what each player makes per year. Just looking at this chart for a few minutes, I've come up with the following questions that could be used in a math class for a problem solving lesson. Some of these questions would also require the students to locate some additional data as well. * Is there a correlation between team expenditure and winning the Championship/making the playoffs/number of wins in a season? * What percent of a team's total expenses do "star players" take up? * Are star player's "worth it" for a baseball team? * How have team expenses changed over the past 15 years? * Are baseball players being paid more today than in the past or are their salaries just keeping up with inflation? * How much do today's baseball stars make in comparison to the stars of the late 90's and early 00's? Is this difference warranted? I'm sure there are plenty of better questions here that I'm missing.

"Are you an aspiring rap lyricist? Have I got the tool for you! RapPad is a site where you can compose your raps with the help of rhyme lookups, syllable counters, and a library of beats. It also puts you in touch with a community for discussion, feedback, and online rap battles. But even if you're not planning on writing raps, it offers a unique kind of linguistic fun. With the "Generate Line" feature, you can give RapPad a line, and it will write the next line for you by pulling from a library of successful rap songs. I entered a bunch of famous first lines from literature, and got RapPad to give me back some gems. Are they literature? Are they rap? Let's call it raperature. Or maybe literatrap? Anyway, here are 18 literary first lines paired with rap lyrics." I don't know what the lesson is exactly, but there's some sort of lesson on creativity, writing, vocabulary, etc. waiting to be created here...