The Teacher Toolbox

Tonight I’ve added my cubic metre lesson to my website. I’ve added useful hints on sub-tasking & group work skills. I’ve also added activities to aid estimation & conceptualisation skills.

This cubic metre lesson is a really good way to demonstrate just how big a cubic metre ‘really’ is. It demonstrates what ‘metres cubed’ really means when the ‘unit’ is required in the text book.

The ideas presented might also give the students some idea what is needed when they have to order gravel for their driveways in years to come

Enjoy the learning

Adrian

Look I know it sounds a little trite, but you’ll hear it bandied about all over the place… ‘It is our job to teach our students to use software that hasn’t been invented yet’. So how do we do it?

I like the idea of ‘transfer learning’ and ‘problem solving’. I often demonstrate a process in one piece of software and then set the task in another. This way the students have to solve problems based on previous knowledge, guessing & checking and by transfering skills from one interface to another. The easiest way to do this is to demonstrate a task in Word and then set the assignment to be completed in Open Office or Google docs.

When cleaning up some old disks today I found a tutorial for using Excel for creating a graph.

I wonder how you might use this to encourage ‘transfer learning’?

Adrian

In the beginning adrianbruce.com was a means for me to put the stuff I use with my classes online for the world to use so people don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Now, as time goes by, I’ve become aware that the navigation of the site is (insert nice word for become very difficult).

So at the moment I’m working on putting a ‘google search field’ on each page as well as ‘breadcrumb’ navigation i.e. at the top of each page you’ll see – adrianbruce.com (which will get you back to the homepage) / Math ( which will get you back to the Math Page ) and then the page you are on.

Hopefully this will enable people to find their way around my teaching resources a little more easily.

That said, today I’ve updated lots of stuff… Feel free to check out and use it with your kids…

The calculator game

Place Value game

Olympic Diving

Addition Doubles

& Place Value Charts - Thousands, Millions, Billions, Trillions, Quadrillions

catch ya soon

Adrian

Hi Again All,

Here is the second in my series of three addition games that I’ve set the goal of completing this week. This new addition game deals with reinforcing the addition facts of ‘doubles + 1′. I’ve played it heaps with kids over the years and it is very effective.

You can add to the gameplay by allowing students to use calculators and this way they will see that the human mind can be a more efficient tool to use in some situations

For those of you in the snow, you can play this game by drawing it up in chalk on the carpet.

Enjoy

Adrian

Tonight I’ve finished off a third problem solving poster and I’ve made all three problems available as Word files and Acrobat files on my site. I’ve made the posters big enough to put up on your Math Walls or in the windows of your classroom.

I love watching kids different reactions to these problems. See what sorts of reactions you get when you present them.

cheers

Adrian

PS Remember to hand out the URL so that your students can download the colour versions.