1512-Week 5

 Outdated Materials:

        Students are flying by teachers with their ease of use of technology. As teachers we need to keep up with our students, not by playing video games all day of course, but by learning how to use tools such as SmartBoards to better educate our students. There are many new technologies out there now that would greatly benefit our students.

Math Humor:

        Humor is a good way to hook anyones interest in something. Young students love to laugh and love jokes. Starting math class with a math joke can lighten the mood, make math more interesting, and make the subject less intimidating. 

   Example 1:

Question: What is the area of a circle? 

Answer: pi R^2? 

Response: Pie are not square. Pie are round. Cornbread are square. 

   Example 2:  

Question: What does the little mermaid wear? 

Answer: An Algebra.

        I recently read an article called Why Laughter Makes Classroom Management More Effective. This is a very insightful article. It talks about how adding humor to a lesson can make you a more likable teacher, which can give you more power to influence their behavior. Laughter can break down those social-emitional walls to bring together diverse groups of students in one happy classroom. The article also points out that it takes little planning to bring laughter into the classroom.

What you know about Math?

1510-Week 5

Penguin Math

        Making math “fun” and connecting it to the “real world” can be a little tough. The Let’s Play Math Blog post, Penguin Math, was a very easy read and explains a very simple technique to use in the classroom to help with word problems. Although it is fictional characters you are using for the word problem examples it still relates to a real world problem and students like to see where they can apply these new skills they are learning.
        There are many ways you can connect math to student's lives. It is the job of the teacher to find out what students are interested in and how they can incorporate that into a math lesson. It is in this way that you hook the students interest in math. The site, Word Problems for Kids, gives a few examples of ways to relate to students (it is now outdated for current students as it was written in 1999). The site Plane Math.com also has an activities page for students to explore and do independent learning.
        Another good site for older students to do some math independently is What Good is Math? This site offers a few different real world problems students can explore and solve on their own. This site also links to another page called Mathletics, which one math application to each sport it list. This would be great for those students that have more interests in sports over math to get them more interested in math.


Other Math Hook Examples: 
    Videos- 

    Games- Elementary Math Games
                Cool Math Sites


    Comics-