An Introduction

Welcome to the 2013-2014 school year! 

We've really hit the ground running this year, which has been tremendously exciting and gratifying. Unfortunately, it also means that the blog has gotten off to a slow start, even as things in the classroom have taken off. 

Expect more regular updates as we get up to speed (and sign up to have new posts sent to you via email on the right side of this page!).  

For now, here are a few snapshots of what we've been up to over the last two weeks. 

Each week begins with an all-school assembly. Our community continues to grow, and these weekly gatherings keep us connected.  

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Our first theme of the year is Explorers of the World. In Science, we've gone back to some of the earliest recorded scientific thought. How can we learn about the nature of the world around us using only our senses and our intellect? 

We had some lovely, sunny days our first week back, and we took advantage of them to do a very old fashioned project. Sam Hirschman introduced us to one of the feats of the pre-Socratic philosopher Thales: While visiting the Great Pyramids in Egypt, Thales was able to accurately calculate their heights by measuring their shadows, then comparing them to the shadows of smaller objects whose heights were more easily measurable. 

We tasked the kids with determining the height of one of the light poles in the S-K parking lot by using the same trick. 

They set about their task by each selecting an object from school to measure, then measuring its height, and its shadow in the afternoon sun: 

We then created a class graph of all of our data, plotting both the height of the objects and the length of the shadow. 

We discovered that there is a linear relationship between our data points, which allows us to calculate the heights of large objects based on the measurements of their shadows. 

It's an activity that has spilled over from Science class into Math, and even a bit into Writing, as we stress the importance of keen observation of details and relationships. 

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Rachel discusses digital citizenship with our class

We also spent time last week discussing digital citizenship and responsibility. As you may know, Summers-Knoll has a 1-to-1 laptop program at the middle school level, meaning that each student is assigned their own computer for school use. However, before issuing them, we are working to establish institutional guidelines for their safe and appropriate use. Our students have an active role in the creation of these guidelines, and we've spent time working as a class and in small groups to create a code of conduct. When is Youtube okay to use? Is Minecraft an appropriate use of school time? How private is a school email account? Should other people be able to use your passwords? These are some of the many questions we're navigating as a community entering the online sphere. It's an interesting discussion, and a necessary one. 

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We even had our first field trip of the year last week, following the untimely malfunction of the middle school air conditioner on an abnormally hot day. Rather than swelter, we adjourned to the Kelsey Museum of Archeology and the University of Michigan Museum of Art. 

At the Kelsey, each student selected three artifacts that captured their interest, then wrote a little about each of them. They then placed each item on world history timeline, as well as on a map. 

At the UMMA, S-K Art instructor Monica took us to observe some of the pottery on display, tying in some of the work that has been done in class. 

The first of many class portraits!

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We are profoundly lucky to have County Farm Park right across the street from our school. It's a wonderful place to play, study, observe, and contemplate. 

We took an early morning walk last week to discuss a few of its key features: woods, prairie, ponds, and the community farm. Karl also had them playing soccer in the park for PE. It's a fabulous resource and I suspect that we will be regular and frequent visitors! 

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Finally, we've already had some class birthdays! It's a bit of a class birthday tradition that the birthday boy or girl gets to choose an activity for the class from a list made by me. It's usually a sizable list of options that includes things like, "Listen to Jason tell stories about the 80s," or "Handwriting Jamboree," but kids always seem to choose the "Recess" option. 

This week, however, we had two birthdays! One student chose recess, while the second chose "watch an episode of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation'." As it turns out, there was a specific episode that I had been planning on screening as a tie-in to our study of the Scientific Revolution. We've been discussing rational thought versus empirical data, so this episode was actually the perfect way to close out a busy Friday afternoon. 

Here's a scene in which an amnesiac Data is skeptical of some pre-industrial age science: 

As a teacher, I recognize, love, and dread that look on Data's face as he skeptically listens to that lecture. 

The kids loved it, and we paused frequently to discuss deduction, logical fallacies, and the fits and starts of developing scientific thought. It even allowed a little discussion about the power of using genre to convey ideas in interesting formats. 

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This has only been a taste of what we've been up to! As you can see, we've been busy! I look forward to chatting with you all about the work we've been doing on Curriculum Night! We're off to a great new year! 

Lee on Computer Games

This is Lee.  I am posting on this blog for the first time, and I am super excited!  I am going to tell you about video games we have been using in our class.  One online game I would suggest is Gamestar Mechanic!  It is all about learning to build computer games, and you can play games that others have built. You can build educational games, skill games, or even games with riddles!  You can edit your avatar’s speed and health, and an enemy’s speed, damage, health, movements, and possibly rate of fire and jumping!  It has been useful in our class because we could make projects with it.  You can build games with text and a story, or just to be a challenge!  

Here are some of my sample games:

The first game is just for a short challenge:

Cavern of Stars

These two games show people the basics of gamestar mechanic controls:

Game for New Players 1

Game for New Players 2

This game is to show that backgrounds are important in games.  For example, if you play without a background, this game looks simple.  But with a background, there is an illusion.  (Press z or m to go into a portal (yellow side) and come out the other end (gray side).)

Light and Shadow

Here are some Farm to Table games from the start of the year: 

Laurea's Farm to Table game

Lee's Farm to Table game

Next is a game that I made in math class, about a game we were studying called Nim.  We were studying it because it shows how binary works, in a simple way.  Each player can take 1, 2, or 3 sticks at a time and whoever takes the last stick wins or loses. (Predetermined at the start)  

You play with 20 sticks and take turns.  If you go first and pick the right number of sticks sticks you always win.  
First turn: pick 3.  
All other turns: If your opponent chose 2, take 2, chose 1, take 3, chose 3, take 1.  

If you do this, you will always win, because when either player is at 5 sticks, the player who’s turn it is loses.  You can force your opponent down to five sticks if it is their turn with nine, down to nine if it is their turn with 13, and down to 13 if it is their turn with 17.

Here is a version of Nim that I made with Gamestar Mechanic. To make your selection, press Z.

Nim

I hope you like these games, and maybe even get an account!  

And speaking of games, I think that since Electrocity and Garbage Dreams are allowed in our class, I will tell you about them.  

Electrocity is all about running an energy- efficient and populous city and after 150 “turns”, you are graded on how well you ran your city.  You start with $400 and a population of 10,000.  You start with a small wind farm powering your electricity. If you go bankrupt or have a population of less than 1000 people, you lose.  I have a high score of  85%, or “A-”  if you just continually press “next turn”, (And always buy the power shortfall), you end up with 68 points, or a “B”  This was relevant to Global Citizenship because it is all about running a town.

Garbage dreams is all about recycling.  You get a pile of trash and recyclables and have to recycle and throw away the items that you find.  The recyclables need to be sorted into organics, paper, aluminum, tin, glass, and plastics.  You start with paper, organics, and $150.  You can expand your garbage empire, but you only have 8 “months” (turns).  The goal is to get as high of a percentage of recycling as possible. My high score is 13%.  You lose if you go bankrupt.  It is related to Global Citizenship because we were studying the great garbage patch, and pollution in general.

Introducing Michael Paul Goldenberg

As you already know, Michael Paul Goldenberg recently joined the Summers-Knoll staff as a math instructor. He has also started an S-K blog to help connect families to the classroom. Check it out (and subscribe!) to it here:

http://summersknollmath.blogspot.com

The Summers-Knoll Middle School Math Program

Karl Sikkenga has written a blog entry that I'd like you to take a look at. In it, he discusses the current state of our middle school math program. While I've spoken about this to most parents individually, I think Karl has done a nice job of summarizing how our math program has developed, both in terms of philosophy and practice.

Take a look at the entry, and let us know if you have questions or comments!

 Karl's Blog: True Math

Here's an example of some of the work that Michael has been doing with our students. They spent today taking this concept:

... and building it using manipulatives in order to truly understand it:

It's an example of students literally constructing their own knowledge of mathematics! Read more about the specifics in this post over at Michael's Summers-Knoll Math blog.

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On a related note, parents will be hearing from me individually in the days ahead regarding individualized Singapore Math goals. I've been working with each student in the middle school to set weekly Singapore progress goals. I'm managing these goals with individualized Google Docs, which I will be making available to parents. I think you'll find this system helpful to gain insight into how your student is progressing throughout the year. As always, I welcome any feedback you may have!

Math: Applying What We've Learned

On the first day of our new math groups, I handed out a sheet of math problems to the group. It was a hodge-podge of items that included questions like this:

Divide 30 by ½ and then add 10. What is the answer?

At first, almost everyone came up with 25, which is, of course, incorrect. (If you're confused, you'll find an explanation at the end of this post.)

At one point, a student called out in mock anguish, "JASON, these are RIDDLES, not MATH!"

While there was definitely a riddle-like aspect to some of the problems, they all required students to read carefully, think both critically and creatively, and really consider exactly what it was that was being asked of them. These are vital skills when it comes to solving problems, whether they're based in mathematics or not.

This is one of the main ideas I'm trying to convey in math group: in the real world, no one will ever ask you to solve a traditional math problem presented as they are in textbooks. For example, outside of school, I've never, ever had someone say to me, "Hey, Jason! Given 5x²+12x-98, plot a parabola. Your job depends on it!" In order for math to be truly useful, you must learn how, when, and why to apply it to real world situations.

For this reason, I've been stressing the importance of developing strong problem-solving strategies in our math group. Too often, students get bogged down with how quickly they're progressing through math. For example, one day I challenged the group to calculate the volume of our very irregularly-shaped classroom as part of a larger problem. While most of the class was energetically taking measurements and arguing about how to deal the odd angles of our room, one student was hanging back. When I asked why, he replied, "They're doing 7th grade math. I'm not in that book yet." When we sat down and broke the larger problem into smaller chunks, he quickly realized that he did have the skills, but because I hadn't posed the question in the same way that his textbook presented things, he assumed that it was beyond them. I want our students to start thinking beyond their textbooks. Textbooks can be a vital part of math education, but it's merely one component of an education in mathematics.

To address this, I frequently greet the math group with a warm-up challenge. Some are more challenging than others. One day, I gave them this classic scenario:

Danielle, her alligator, her monkey, and her parrot have to cross a rickety bridge. She can only take one animal at a time, or she risks falling on deadly cheese (she's lactose intolerant, a fact that was suggested by a student). The alligator can't be trusted with the monkey or the parrot, and the parrot can't fly because of a broken wing. How can she get all three animals across the bridge safely?

On this occasion, most students figured out a reasonable sequence of events relatively quickly, and we moved on to other things. Last week, however, solving our warm-up ended up taking up the entire hour of math, and we ended up calling in Karl's math group to help us out:

Al says: Bob is lying.
Bob says: Carl is lying.
Carl says: Al and Bob are both lying.
Who is lying? Who is telling the truth?
There is only one possible answer.

This logic puzzle generated a ton of discussion and numerous suggestions on how to solve it. In the photo above, there are two different white boards and numerous pieces of scratch paper being used to puzzle it all out. We eventually got the correct answer. See if you can as well!

Karl's class returned the favor by inviting us to participate in an electoral math exercise. They created a map of the United States using Karl's amazing coffee mug collection (he has one from every state in the union). First, all of the states most likely to vote for Romney were put in one group, then those most likely to vote for Obama were put into another. The battleground states were left on the floor, representing a number of different possibilities for electoral victory for each candidate. Not only did it shed light on our political process, but it also made real world connections about where each candidate has been campaigning lately, and why. 

Engaging our math groups with this problem-based approach encourages meaningful connections with the material being covered, which brings us closer to our goal of true mastery of mathematics.


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Back to our original problem:

* The question is worded specifically: Divide 30 by 1/2 and then add 10. Most people read it quickly and divided 30 in half, and got 15. Of course, 30 divided by 1/2 (or, stated another way, 30 divided by .5) is 60. So the answer to the question "Divide 30 by 1/2 and then add 10" is 70.

If you need help solving the other problems, ask your child about it!