Making A cube

This method of making cube has been adapted from 100 teaching ideas for teaching mathematic written by Mike Ollerton



Continuing  with 3 Acts method in teaching mathematics. I have found a wonderful idea to brush the children critical thinking and problem solving. So Here I go



Step 1  Cut out a 3 by 3 Square shape from a graph paper and  label it from 1 to 9 .

cut the middle square by cutting from 1 side and then cutting the centre

Also label the opposite side as alphabets e.g. A.......H,I

Now ask the student to fold the squares in such a way that they make a closed cube.

One of the bigger challenges is to write it down using words and mathematical notations such that another person could also for the same type of cube. Here is one such cube I have formed my self

Making a cube from 9 by 9 cut out graph paper by Saad_Mehboob

Diary of 2 April 2014

Sometimes I think I am welcomed in class 7f very enthusistically , and other times I think I am just one of their usual teachers. The fact that I am a male teacher and that I look young doesnt make eligible to earn a position as a maths teacher in their class. One has to work hard to maximize the potential of the whole class. I really do become concern at times at the responses that I get from students. It really makes my own teaching questionable. Kids are kids, and will remain like that. Some will throw chalk pieces on others while others would not listen and ask to repeat no matter how many times you repeat yourself. An interesting thing that happened today is a boy, came to me while the whole class was in a big choas of shout and student scuffling with each other while I was trying to battle my way explaining kids the properties of Kite. He said that I should interrupt with the noise makers often ( which included himself) and that picking them up and shouting on them infront of the whole class is the best solution. What I did appreciate is the level of sincerity the kid has in telling me something which I disapproved for so long. However it seems to be a easy solution for majority to shout at their kids and make them Listen to teacher. Is this the best strategy. Well if making kids listen to you is what is only desired, I might agree. But I think teaching is more about making children quite. Some of the things I realized I might try on this class , is to identify different types of learners, e.g visual and kinesthetic. In that way my lesson would be planed while keeping in mind the different types of learners I have Any advise????

Using 3 Acts Method to teach Mathematics

If you have heard of Dan Meyer, you know what 3 act task method is . This activity was part of my assignment so I conducted this activity only once. Plus after reading his blog I concluded that The activity I conducted was not exactly intended by Dan Meyer. Anyways. Here is the activity That I conducted


Lesson Name: Quadrilaterals and its properties

Step 1. Show kids Video:  In this session kids were shown a short video of about 1 minutes, this included cut out pieces of graph making different quadrilaterals . The idea was to let kids see how different properties could be proved by having hands on activities.An example video show below consist of cut out of angle of a paralellogram and then these shapes were joined together to prove that sum of interior angles of a quaderlateral adds to 360 degrees.

Angle properties of Paralellogram from Saad on Vimeo.

2. Student Activities. Students were then asked to fill the worksheet to fill the gaps relating to the property that they had observed.

A ________ is a quadrilateral which has _____ Pairs of _________ sides and opposite sides are _______. All

the interiors angles are equal to ________degrees. The diagonals are _____ in length and ______ each other.

Now do Ex 15 b Q2 a&c

HW: Q2b




Students response: I need to admit that student response to the activity was not upto the expectations. The notorious kids remained disengaged and were even more concerned with appreciating the way a tablet pc works and the fact that I have made video of my hands making some drawings let them wonders who was holding the camera.



Conclusion drawn from this activity: Well It would be early to say that using technologies such as power point projector and showing videos to kids is waste of time, what I did concluded from this session is that these activities require certain tactics, being well versed with technology is 1st and the foremost. Secondly we really need to decide how much technology input is necessary and that have we develop that digital mindset where we all speak and listen tech language