[Act 1] Compilation (some of the first two weeks)

I've been swamped.  Grad studies + teaching is totally draining me, and it's only the first week!  Hopefully it'll ease up once I gain a bit more traction and I'll be able to Blog a bit more.  I was a bit bummed that I couldn't coach basketball this year, but it seems like I have my plate overfull anyway.

I have been meaning to blog about the various things that I've done in the first two weeks of school - but as time goes on, I feel like I am less and less capable of doing these lessons justice (or even capable of fully explaining what went on in the class).

I don't really want an incomplete description of the activities like my first angry birds post.  Man... I just did too much with that during to fully explain it well in the first post (or I just didn't spend enough time recalling everything I did during class).  I had to follow up with another post that elaborated on some of the details.  Having said that I don't really want an incomplete description... I still want to force myself to present all of them out there.  So the following are some of the "Act 1's" that I've done in the past week or so.

Recently there was a sinkhole on the highway -- east end of town.  I grappled with whether to use this right away -- since it wasn't relating directly to the subject we were talking about.  I decided to do it anyway since it was fresh, hot, new, and exciting.  

Kids recognized the situation instantly and buzz was already building.  I built the situation into learning about asking good questions, and having them realize the power mathematics have in answer these.  Things that are logical.  Things that we can test.  Things that make sense.  So we talked measurements, depth, length, volume, sizes of cars, speed of the car, weakening soil...etc.  Good stuff.  (I'm skimming over a lot of details like I did with the Angry birds post... so don't hesitate to ask if you want more details!)

This is part of the Act 3 that I gave them:

Here's 1 more (I intended on blogging more, but I need to get working on other stuff...)

Simple one with pictures that I took at the pet store.  "Which one has the better value?" was the main one that we looked at.  We got to talking about prices, taxes, percentages, value, fractions...etc.

I then threw this at them

So nice, good opportunity to talk about percentages, fine prints, infinitely multiplying items (going to bring this back later for power) to get more money...etc.