Get Flurrious

When you make and share a snowflake, Get Flurrious reportedly sends $1 to UNICEF. Making digital snowflakes is a fun activity involving the mathematical concept of symmetry.

Scott Kim on TED.com

For years I have been using Scott Kim's Inversions to teach the concepts of mirror and rotation symmetry in Geometry class. The students love combining art and math and are able to challenge themselves while having fun.

I have never met another teacher who uses Scott Kim's book (ok, we all like to think we are unique) so was delighted to see that he now has teacher resources, relating to the Inversions book, on his website scottkim.com. I had developed my own methods for teaching the concepts and it is interesting, and helpful, to see exercise developed by the artist.

The video passes too quickly through Kim's examples to truly appreciate them (I paused the video numerous times and I was familiar with most of the slides) so I recommend visiting the website where one can view galleries of the artist's work.

The assignment I use is the following: The students must make two drawings, one using rotation symmetry and one using mirror symmetry. The may use their name (unless they have a naturally symmetric name) or a term relating to mathematics. To give the students inspiration, I show them former students' work and Mr. Kim's book. The students are not allowed to plagiarise the examples but can incorporate the design ideas in their own work. I make use of the windows in the classroom to help the students trace elements of their drawings. For anyone interested in further information in teaching symmetry can send me an email.

Scott Kim takes apart the art of puzzles | Video on TED.com

Not About Math - Phonics and Letters

Methods change over the years. There was 'phonics' then 'whole language'.

Our 7-year old recently came home talking about phonograms (my spell check doesn't even recognize that word). "A the four letter A, E the two letter E, A the two letter A," were the phrases that were being chanted around the house and I didn't have a clue what she was talking about. But then, isn't the internet great!

In case any of you are feeling oldish and out of the loop, here is an excellent site that gives a thorough explanation of phonograms and also, how to write the alphabet (the modern way).

Phonogram Page

The Mathematics of Metaphore: x = y

I have routinely and successfully used metaphor in teaching mathematics especially when describing how the brain works. Every once in a while I find a student who resists: "Why are you talking about learning to keep your balance on a bicycle? I thought we were talking about studying for the chapter 5 test?"

I found the following video, newly added to the TED.com repertoire. James Geary is amusing as he describes the importance of metaphor in human thought.

It Makes Me Want to Shout!

"Learning to Teach to Bridge the Achievement Gap". This is the currently the biggest buzz phrase in education. It is powerfully loaded, politically correct, eduspeak. But what does it really mean?

'Closing the gap is this generation’s civil rights issue, said Charles Weis, superintendent of schools in Santa Clara County. “We know what needs to be done; we know how to do it,” Dr. Weis said at a rally for educational improvement. Yet, he added, “educators are notoriously bad at adopting others’ good ideas".'

So what are some of those good ideas? Well here is one being used in a school district in Santa Clara County:

'On a recent day in Martha Borg’s third-grade classroom, she asked three students to join her at a small semicircular table. While the other students worked in their notebooks or with tutoring programs on computers, the three sounded out some new words — like “natural,” “environment” and “tortoise” — and then read aloud as Mrs. Borg moved from one to the next.'

That is the way that reading was taught 40 years ago. It appears to be working once again. We didn't use computers, instead we practiced our math algorithms (but that was before it was called drill and kill). And guess what? Students don't know their math facts anymore, especially fractions, but at least they haven't suffered sudden death due to practicing their multiplication facts and perhaps more of them are learning to read again.

Those educators who are "notoriously bad at adopting others’ good ideas", by Superintendent Weis' standards anyway, might just be the ones who, having practiced in the field for years, know what works. In this instance, the "new" method is indeed the "old" method which was sloughed-off some time ago in favor of some new fad in reading education.

"Small groups are a part of all classes at Anderson, and students get small-group time with the teacher. The groupings cluster students of similar skills, as determined by another practice the new leadership introduced: continual assessment. The assessments then guide individual instruction."

The bold and italicized type is mine. My goodness! Another example of the reversal of a longtime trend of integrating students of different skill levels. What is being said here? That teaching small groups of similarly skilled students is effective. Don't all of us of a certain age remember reading groups 1, 2 and 3? But then they changed the names of the groups (red, yellow, and blue) so the students wouldn't feel bad if they were in a lower level group, except that the plan didn't work and all the students knew which group was reading more difficult material. Sorting students into ability groups was called "tracking", a reviled practice now, and there has been a movement to abolish it for the last 30 years.

Some of the rationale to abolish tracking was good. Too many students who had the ability to do well in school were often placed in the lower tracks. This generally correlated with race and class. Conversely, students who should never have been put into an "honors" class were placed there due to their place in society and the influence of their parents.

Teacher training programs claimed that multi-level learning groups were more effective. Of course research was cited and examples given. The efficacy of the able students helping the less-able students to master the material was touted as an idea. But if a person thinks about it for more than 2 seconds, the grand plan doesn't make very much sense in terms of efficiency or outcomes.

It is ironic that a type of program that was tossed because it was unfair is being re-introduced, under a different name of course, to "help close the achievement gap".

It makes one want to shout! I hope Arne Duncan is listening.