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Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Day 123: Beauty and Cake

We are approaching the end of the unit on functions in Math 8.  Tomorrow will be the test so today, they were working on the review.

"The test tomorrow will cover all of the material from this unit.  The Review in the back of your packet has a great summary of the skills and content that you will need.  If you can answer those questions, you'll be ready for tomorrow.  This book is mine.  The answers to the review are in the back of it.  When you've finished yours, come check your answers against mine.  If you find yourself struggling with a concept, come ask me.  If you want clarification, come ask me.  If you need help, come ask me."

Then I sat at a desk and got to building.





Some feet for scale

We talked about quick ways to calculate the number of hexagons in the shape.  It was a good discussion

Students came over to ask questions, or just to watch me build, asking questions about the patterns.

In geometry, I talked about how I think a major short-coming of math education is that we focus so heavily on the bricks that we forget to show the students the cathedrals and mansions that they can build.  We are so focused on the ingredients that we never let them bake the cake.

When I was in school and took Home Economics, it was one of my least favorite classes.  I loved cooking and baking, but we spent so much time focusing on proper measurements (something I thought was easy) that we didn't get to bake as much as I wanted to.  We spent the first half of shop class learning about safety and theory before we got to build anything.

I'll write more about this later, but now, I'm tired.  Thursday, we have parent-conferences all day and Friday is an inservice.

I wonder how many Target stores I can hit before Monday...

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