welcome to the Math Teachers' Circle discussion group
Brianna Donaldson
Welcome to the Math Teachers' Circle discussion group! The focus of this group will be on mathematics as it relates to Math Teachers' Circle sessions, ideas about teaching mathematics particularly at the middle school level, and ideas about connecting mathematics from Math Teachers' Circles with mathematics in the classroom. We're hoping this will be a place where people can ask questions and talk about ideas related to what they've been doing in their Math Teachers' Circles, discuss ideas about incorporating problem solving into classroom lesson plans, and brainstorm ways to connect up Math Teachers' Circle sessions with the classroom. All teachers and Math Teachers' Circle leaders from around the country are invited to participate, so this should be a wonderful way to connect with and get ideas from MTC colleagues from near and far.
Anyone who has accepted their invitation to join the group should be allowed to post a new thread. If you have accepted the invitation and still find you are not able to start a discussion, please contact me OFF LIST (i.e., don't reply to this email) at bri...@aimath.org.
I'm looking forward to the discussion!
Best,
Brianna Donaldson
Director of Special Projects
American Institute of Mathematics
Beard, Diane G
Diane Beard
Math Strategies/Problem Solving/Study Skills
Room: D-1
bea...@aps.edu
________________________________________
From: mathteach...@googlegroups.com [mathteach...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Brianna Donaldson [bri...@aimath.org]
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 10:29 AM
To: mathteach...@googlegroups.com
Subject: welcome to the Math Teachers' Circle discussion group
Joshua Zucker
> Speaking about math talk, I just set up some extra credit for my students. They will need to solve the problem using the formula to find the volume of a cylinder. I am doing my daughters wedding cake and needed to find out how many cake mixes to purchase. 1 cake mix will complete 2-9x1 inch cake pans. How many mixes are needed for a 14x3 inch cake pan?
This is an interesting problem because of the real-world connection.
On the other hand, if you're using the cylinder volume formula, it
doesn't seem to push kids to think beyond plugging numbers in. I
wonder if there's a way to encourage them to solve it with
proportional reasoning instead, so that they can see the answer as
(14/9)^2 for the radius, times (3/1) for the height, times (1/2) for
the number of mixes?
Oh, and an introduction:
I'm Joshua Zucker, one of the founders of the Math Teachers' Circle
program. I live in Menlo Park, CA, bicycling distance from AIM's
headquarters in Palo Alto. I've been an online teacher (even way back
in 1995 or so, at EPGY at Stanford), a community college teacher, a
high school teacher, a middle school teacher, and nowadays I am a math
circle leader, tutor, curriculum consultant, book editor, and whatever
other interesting math hats I can put on in my career as a freelance
math teacher. I'm unfortunately not very able to work with the
original MTC at AIM during the school year, though I have been there
for all the summer workshops, since they are scheduled at the same
time as another math circle I work with, one that combines students
and teachers over in Oakland. I also work with the teachers' circle
out of MSRI, but they are not quite the same program (in particular,
they don't focus on middle school, though otherwise they are pretty
similar to an AIM circle). I'll probably talk more about MSRI's
program later!
--Joshua Zucker
Beard, Diane G
I introduced this problem as a challenge to all of my students 6-8th. My class group ranges from student who are beginning steps through advanced. The majority is under proficiency and this challenge is re-enforcing some concepts that were recently taught to the 8th graders. Some of my 6th grade students are asking where they would find the formula to do the math. I told them to google volume of a cylinder to find the steps. Now the students are becoming familiar with researching for answers with limited information. I will get a few of my students approaching me next week with their answers and how they got those answers. I want them to learn that a textbook isn't the only way to learn and you can always explore through the Internet different strategies for solving a problem.
Diane Beard
Math Strategies/Problem Solving/Study Skills
Room: D-1
bea...@aps.edu
________________________________________
From: mathteach...@googlegroups.com [mathteach...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of Joshua Zucker [joshua...@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 17, 2011 4:40 PM
To: mathteach...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: welcome to the Math Teachers' Circle discussion group
--Joshua Zucker
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John Osborn
How do I switch my subscription to a daily digest? It looks like we may be quite the active group, and my inbox is getting somewhat clogged with all of our introductions. ; )
Hi to all. I am just finishing up teaching my third year of high school math at a high-needs school in the Austin area. I've taught AP calc and precalc the last two years. Going back to grad school full-time (Texas A&M) so I can finish up my MS in Math. Maybe a PhD after that?
I have attended the Austin Math Teachers' Circle for a year now. We meet on the beautiful campus of UT Austin.
John
Philip Yasskin
This is Phil Yasskin. I am faculty at Texas A&M. I run a 2-week summer school program for gifted middle school students (SEE-Math) http://see-math.math.tamu.edu. And I run the Brazos Valley Math Teachers' Circle http://see-math.math.tamu.edu/. A friend of mine wants to start an Elementary School Math Circle and could use some help.
Look me up when you get in town or before. I can give you advice on neighborhoods and schools.
Phil
Brianna,
How do I switch my subscription to a daily digest? It looks like we may be quite the active group, and my inbox is getting somewhat clogged with all of our introductions. ; )
Hi to all. I am just finishing up teaching my third year of high school math at a high-needs school in the Austin area. I've taught AP calc and precalc the last two years. Going back to grad school full-time (Texas A&M) so I can finish up my MS in Math. Maybe a PhD after that?
I have attended the Austin Math Teachers' Circle for a year now. We meet on the beautiful campus of UT Austin.
John
Philip B. Yasskin
Department of Mathematics
Texas A&M University
3368 TAMU
College Station, TX 77843-3368
yas...@math.tamu.edu
http://www.math.tamu.edu/~yasskin/
Room: BLOC 620 I
Office: 979-845-3734
Pari Ford
I am an assistant professor of math at the University of Nebraska at Kearney (middle of NE on I-80). I did my graduate work at UNL where I first attended their Math Teachers' Circle. When I started at UNK in 2008, I also started a MTC. It was great to get a team together and attend the MTC workship in DC in 2009. We currently only have our sessions during the school year and have not had a summer institute yet. The Nebraska Math and Science Summer Institutes offers a class (Experimentation, Conjecture and Reasoning) for middle school math teachers that addresses the ideas of a MTC summer institute. Participants in the NMSSI classes do earn 3 hours of graduate credit.
My dissertation was in combinatorics and graph theory and I teach courses for K_12 teacher candidates. I also stay busy with summer online classes for current high school teachers. This summer we are working on geometry. I also have two kids, husband, and dog. Most of my extended family is in central nebraska. I'm looking forward to taking the kids to visit an aunt in Vegas next week (she has a pool) and my sister who lives outside of Seattle in August.
Back to this cylinder problem, I used a problem this semester for my middle school teacher candidates related to scaling and proportion. On their final the students were constructing the first 3 iterations of Sierpinski's triangle and needed to find the area. The students that performed the best on the problem were those that looked at the scaling. Student's that tried to find the lengths of edges and heights of the triangles using "brute force" struggled. Proportional reasoning is usually not intuitive for students. They like the formulas for area and volume.
Pari Ford