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

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

Diary of 26 March 2014 Maths Disaster

Today I stepped into the class, and had this feeling that it is a difficult day . Just before my period was the social studies period and the only significant point that I could notice while sitting outside preparing the study material was that the teacher could shout LOUDER then ME. While I have read 2 of the John Holts Books criticizing the current education model , I sometimes think that LETTING Children explore can turn out to be a big disaster . Anyways, I was bound to take a test and the children pretend that they were prepared for it on Tuesday and not today. A usual excuse. While doing the test they were all quite as they want to gain the marks, some were peaking here and there, but I let go of this matter for now . Once the test was done I gave them a little proving question:

The Question was : Prove that the exterior angles of a triangle adds up to 360. Since the children were not really fond of proving anything and take things for granted they were surprised as to why were they asked to prove anything:

I made this diagram

To prove that a+b+c= 360

Majority agreed that x+y+z=180 , but none try to use the knowledge of angle on straight line

So I try to solve it on my own . I wrote a few steps

a= 180-z (  angles on a straight line)

b= 180-x  ( angles on a straight line)

c= 180-y ( angles on a straight line)                                                              

                                                              

so, a+b+c =         (180-z)+(180-x)+(180-y)

=> 540-(x+y+z) 

 put x+y+z =180 => 540-180

therefore  a+b+c= 360 proved

But one boy Nidal stood up and said he had some other way to solve this question, so I let him explore this question

He wrote as follows

Let x=60, y=60 and z=60

thus  a= 180-60 ( angles on a straight line)

          b= 180-60 ( angles on a straight line)

          c= 180-60 ( angles on a straight line)

adding the above

a+b+c = 120+120+120  =360

What I learned from this class is that If you use numbers to prove your point, Children do pick up things quickly