[Rescued from my old blog.]
I’ve been procrastinating my preparations for co-op classes this week, but I think I’m ready. I almost forgot the scissors, but now I have them in my bag, so we will be able to cut the “infinite pizza” pieces. And I have two fun quotes for the blackboard:
[Rescued from my old blog.]
I thought you might enjoy the quote I’m going to use on the blackboard in math class:
The clearer the teacher makes it, the worse it is for you. You must work things out for yourself and make the ideas your own.
—William F. Osgood, quoted in
Out of the Mouths of Mathematicians
by Rosemary Schmalz
Continue reading Math Quotes II: The Ultimate Goal of Mathematics
[Rescued from my old blog.]
My computer and I seem to have come to a temporary truce: I pretend I’m never going to shut it off again, and it pretends it’s always going to come back if I do have to reboot. (Nope, no new computer in the offing at this point. We’re just at a cease fire here, until the next big thunderstorm throws a power outage at us…) So I thought it was high time for me to get back into the habit of blog posting.
Continue reading I’m Ba-a-a-ack! (Math Quotes of the Week I)
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Well, my computer is still being rebellious, so I’m at dh’s office again to check e-mail while the kids are gone to karate. But I thought it was high time I got another entry up on the blog…
One of my favorite activities for Math Club is to have my students write their own story problems. Then we pass the problems around so everyone can try to solve them. With all the discussion of problem solving on the math forum lately, I thought it would be fun to extend the challenge to you all. Can you come up with a word problem for us to practice our problem-solving skills on?
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My computer just died. How frustrating! Computer-savvy ds says it probably needs a new motherboard. Blissfully computer-ignorant me doesn’t know exactly what that means, but I know enough to tell that it’s not good. I could tell by the way he shook his head and muttered, “Hmmm. Not good,” several times as he tried to get the thing to boot up.
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Eldest dd had her first calculus lesson last night: derivatives. The teacher found the speed of a car at a given point by using the distance function, calculating the average speed over shorter and shorter time intervals. Dd summarized the lesson for me:
“If you want to divide by zero, you have to sneak up on it from behind.”
Of course, she understands you can’t really divide by zero, but I thought her tongue-in-cheek comment was a pretty good description of the process of finding the limit as delta-t approached zero.
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I have been reading up on Charlotte Mason’s teaching style, and I plan to incorporate more copywork and dictation into our school program next year. Here are a few of my favorite funny quotes about math. (These would also make great blackboard quotes for a math classroom.)
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Rudbeckia Hirta over at Learning Curves submits a great idea for a new TV blockbuster:
I’ve read that Charlotte Mason used oral exams like this with her students, though of course without the pressure and sarcastic comments. I’d love to hear how this works in “real life.”
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Well, here I am in the sickly, wee hours of the pre-dawn, wishing I was asleep but too hyped with stress (or caffeine) to go to bed. I’m speaking at the big state conference in just a few days, so I’m down to crunch time: tweaking explanations, adding transitions, printing out overheads, and still trying to cram in an extra topic or two.
I think I try to pack these workshops way too full of information. The un-written rule for speakers is supposed to be KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid!), isn’t it? I should know that I can’t teach everything I know about a topic in a one-hour workshop, but I find myself thinking, “Oh, I almost forgot about this. They’ll need to know that; it’s important. I wonder where I can fit it in?”
I guess this puts me squarely in the “stupid” category.
[Rescued from my old blog.]
Well, I hadn’t planned on spending my day this way. One of the great things about homeschooling is that we can spend time following rabbit trails…
While browsing the Carnival of Homeschooling, I found a link to Farm School blog’s article Fib Foolery, which sent me to Gotta Book for his articles The Fib and More Fibbery (read the comments on both threads, but be warned that some are crude) and several other posts, all of which set me off on a morning of poetic fun. I know what I’m going to share at our Tuesday Teatime and Poetry Reading this afternoon.
Denise Gaskins' Let's Play Math 