Week 6

Week 6 Virtual Manipulative: Attribute Trains

This manipulative is found under Geometry (Grades 6 – 8). Attribute Trains helps students recognize attributes and the pattern of attributes that appear in the given Train. There are three different attributes to pick from color, number and shape. Students have to recognize which of the three is in the Train and finish it. If a wrong piece is put in it will go back to the pile of pieces. When the train is finished the pattern is given in words. This is a good manipulative to use with students who can solve simple patterns. Since there are three different attributes to pick from it makes it more of a challenge.

Week 6 Private Universe Project:

This week’s Private Universe Workshop 6 – Possibilities of Real Life Problems focused on how students come up with strategies to build their understanding of a real-life calculus problem at a young age. When the problem was first introduced in the video I thought it would be impossible for the students to solve. Then Aquisha came up with a good way to start to solve the problem. The way she went about trying to solve it gives the other students a visual representation of the movement of the cat. Making the scale 50 times bigger was a great idea. With this the students got to see when the cat speed up and how much. One of the things I have likes most about the Private Universe Project is how hand on it is. I think students learn more this way. When they can visual see something it is the best experiences they will get. It is interesting how the students go from thinking the cat was running to thinking he was jumping. They get their ideas from looking a graphs, data and talking to each other. They might not have come up with an exact answer but they all learned something. It was good to hear that they use Math in their everyday life. They take what they learned throughout the years with them forever.

Week 6 Lesson Plan: Counting Colors (Color Tiles)

In Counting Colors students spin a spinner with sectors allocated to the four Color Tiles colors and keep track of how many times each color comes up within a specific number spins. In this activity, children have the opportunity to organize and graph data, determine the probability of the occurrence of unequally likely events. Students will first have to guess which number will have ten spins first. They will take turns spinning and use the color tiles to keep track of the number of times. Once one of the colors reaches ten they will have to stop. And talk about their outcome. Everyone’s findings will be up into a larger class graph. We will talk about their results.