257: The Experience

Shapes, shapes, shapes! Shapes are fun to learn in pre-school when all you need to know what it is. fast-forward to geometry and they have lines, and angles, and vertices, and they can also be convex or concave, simple or closed.. Uhmm yikes! It all starts with a polygon. A polygon is a plane figure with at least three straight sides. Each polygon is classified by its number of sides. And some polygons can be other polygons, but those certain polygons can't be the first polygons. Weird, right? For example, a square can be considered a rectangle, but a rectangle can not be considered a square. But why you ask? Let me explain. A square is classified as having four equal sides and four right angles, BUT a rectangle is classified by having four right angles and two pairs of opposite, equal sides. Tricky, right? Now let me tell you about triangles. They have three types, a scalene, an isosceles, or an equilateral. But wait, there is more! It can also be an acute, right or obtuse iso...

For as long as I remember doing math, I remember finding the range, mean, median, and mode. Range is the maximum minus the minimum, mean is the average, median is the middle number, and mode if the number occurring most often. You still with me? Good because I am going to talk to you about this crazy thing called the M.A.D. It stands for the mean absolute deviation. So lets say you have some data, like test scores. Your mean is 73 and your M.A.D is 8. Your mad is going to give you a range of eight below the mean and eight above the mean. So you would be able to say that the test scores majority was between 65 and 81. Still here? Good! There is a great formula to find it and its only half a page long! *insert crying face here* I kind of struggled with the mean absolute deviation at first, but after doing it multiple times, it gets easier. It also gave me a way better understanding of the mean, median and mode. I feel I am able to understand all their definitions way better and can e...

Graphs, graphs, graphs! Who knew there were so many kinds?! Not only are there so many kinds, they are all very specific on what data they can be used with. Some are categorical, some are numerical, and some have trends. The most common ones I already knew a lot about where they group of categorical graphs; the pictograph, bar graph, and circle graph. The numerical set of graphs are the dot plot, line graph, histogram, and stem & leaf plot. Now, I had never heard of a dot plot before, but I knew what the other two were. We talked about line graphs and scatter plots, too. They have different trends that can show whether or not your data is positive or negative! It is amazing how informational graphs can be. They all have their advantages and disadvantages. Some are easy to create, some are hard to create. Some are meant for very large data sets, and some are meant for smaller data sets. I found a fun website that has lots of graph vocabulary!  Graph Vocab  is a fun li...

Hello again! We have started going over statistics, something I am not to familiar with. In class we did a really neat activity with m&ms! To begin the activity each student in the class got a small bag of m&ms. We answered some questions and recorded our data. For example, in my bag I had 3 brown, 5 orange, 3 blue, 3 green, no red, and no yellow. We then made a pictograph based on our own data. When we were finished with our own data, all of the class data was collected for each color of m&ms, and then we created a series of dot plots. We also made another pictograph and a bar graph based on the class data. Since using candy to engage younger children in activities, I found another m&m activity that would be fun for younger classrooms. If you wanna check that out,  M&M Activit y is the place to go! The next part of the activity was something I had never heard of before. We used the bar graph and took the height of each bar and created a circle. Within that ...

First Post! One of the best things about taking this class is all the resources we are provided. From our notebooks that we get to create and make our own, to the websites we are shown. My notebook has been one of the most useful resources and I definitely plan to carry it with me throughout my teaching career. I have been able to put all my notes, formulas, and example worksheets in it! One of the websites,  Math is Fun , has also been very useful. It has lot of activities, has all the math vocab you'll ever need, and covers many topics. We were also introduced to the Polya's four step problem solving process. I have found it super helpful! It is just what its name suggest, four step that help you lay out your step to conclude an answer. The first step is understand the problem, where you make a conjecture about the problem. The step is to devise a plan, where you pick the type of strategy you are going to use to solve the problem. The third step is to carry out the plan, wh...