Mathsational

I borrowed this lesson from John Stevens .  As a quick side note, this is what I love about the MTBoS community on Twitter.  You build a network of creative educators from literally all over the world and your own lessons improve because of the sharing that happens. Now, my students and I live in central Pennsylvania.  We have the occasional earthquakes, but they are they type that only the most observant people even notice.   Here is a link to our most recent earthquake. This is  John's original lesson.  On his page, you will find links to his Slides presentation, lesson plan, and student handout as well as notes about how he implemented the lesson. I started with showing a San Andreas movie trailer. I asked if anyone had seen the movie.  I asked is any of them felt the earthquake that we had the previous summer.  These questions lead to some lively conversation. I showed them some maps from the USGS website that show intensity in ...

Graphing stories are probably one of my favorite ways to start class.  The kids love it too.  I use it for all of my 9-12 students.  I don't match the graphs to the type of function we are studying, we just have at it.  Something about the videos is just very engaging for students. Here is how I use the site. 1)  Give students this handout . 2)  Play the first part of the video pausing as the y-axis is labeled so that students can write their title and labels. 3)  Play the full speed and half speed part of the video. 4)  Pause the video and ask the students to sketch the graph. 5)  Ask if anyone wants to see the video again (sometimes they do, sometimes they don't) 6)  Ask students to compare their graph with an elbow partner and discuss any differences. 7)  Take a pic and project one student's answer (I use Doceri on iPad) 8)  Ask the student to explain what is happening in their graph and how it matche...