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Showing posts from 2018

Paper Plates & Fuzzy Sticks

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As the school year enters fourth quarter, teachers are blessed/cursed by the arrival of nice weather. For those of us in the northeast, we rejoice the end of winter and celebrate the boost to the spirit from the new spring. But along with that comes the battle to keep the students on task and motivated as they can sense that the end of the school year can't be that far away. I have an extra challenge as my classroom looks out on the tennis court and track, and I am always competing with teens enjoying gym class for the attention of my students. One of the last units that we cover in Geometry is our unit on Circles. Having taught Geometry for a number of years, I have always been on the lookout for new ways to engage students with the many terms, concepts, and relationships that come with the Circle unit. While it is always easy for me to immediately go to the Chromebooks and have the students use Desmos and/or GeoGebra to investigate, I decided to go low-tech (again) this ye

Geometry Modeling Set From the Thrift Store

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A couple of weeks ago, I had some time to kill between dropping my daughter off at a friend's home and picking up my son from musical rehearsal. So I decided to visit the local thrift store. I've made out well there over the years, picking up toys for the kids, a record player for my parents, and a variety of other items for the home. But on this day, I found myself drawn to the toy section. This is funny because my own children are (sadly) of an age where they have outgrown toys. Scanning the shelves, there were a number of jigsaw puzzles, "well-loved" toys, and many games. Among the many boxes, I found this: Over the past few months, I have spent many hours constructing polyhedra structures using straws and wire. Here are a few of my creations: So when I came across the Discovery Kids 77-Piece Build & Play Construction Fort for the low-low price of $3.99, I just had to have it. Little did I know, it would quickly become a favorite source of math