Math Talks and Estimation

In the past, I set up a lesson, slapped a “Do Now” in the beginning that activated prior knowledge and jumped into the lesson.  This year I decided to attack the math sense skill deficiency.  I have been starting the lesson with a variety of math talks and estimation.  All or the students love them and have them getting more engaged into mathematics.  Estimation180 by Andrew Stadel is a huge hit. My personally created Dot and Shape talks are right up there as well.  I have transitioned over to keynote for all of my presentations and set up the shape and dot talks to last for 3 seconds and then the students have to draw the shapes.  I will be building a library over time for public use once I set up the copyright stuff on the blog.  While I may have lost an easy transition to the new topic, I have definitely gained energy and, I believe, long term gains in math sense.

Day 20 – End of logic

So I finished logic today with a fizzle… I went off topic and talked with the students for some time on the closing of the government and had them wrestle with some of the regents questions.  While I expect them to do much better later in the year with logic, I am ok with the introduction being modest.  I now am ending my direct teaching, hopefully for the year.  I am really looking forward to teaching transformations next week.