Pi from pies!
There are so many fun math related videos on
Numberphile, which is why I keep talking about them. Here we see how Pi was calculated, using
methods similar to those used when Pi was originally calculated. And the best part is…it’s done using pies!
One of the
big pushes in grade schools right now is in solving word problems. Some of the grade schools are attempting to
use a problem of the week and comparing the results of the different
classrooms, but most of them are attempting regular word problems and tracking
student success. Students often find
that these word problems are weird and have a hard time relating to them. Questions such as:
There are
cows and chickens on a farm, there are ten heads and 14 legs in total, how many
chickens and how many cows are there?
Some of the
students are able to work out the answer, but the biggest challenge many
students face is why they would want to work out the number! Let’s face it, if you are counting heads and
feet, it would be a lot easier just to cunt chickens and cows!
Here is a
fun problem that could be turned into a word problem that students might be a
little more excited to try out.
An example
word question that could be used preempting this video answer would be:
I’m having
a birthday and 41 of my closest friends are coming out. We want to sample several different items
from the local fast food restaurants but we are having some trouble with the
chicken nuggets. Chicken nuggets come in
boxes of 4, 6, 9, 20 how many boxes will we need in order to get 43 nuggets?
These are great!
ReplyDeleteUsing videos is a great way to get students involved in their learning, what a great website. I will definitely have to do some looking around on there.
How do you get videos to link directly into the post?
There was a tutorial posted by David in the assignment description, the link is:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkZepaMO2zA
you should be able to copy and paste from the comments to see the video which talks about links and embedding videos.
Glad you liked the videos, these guys are great!
Hey, great post!
ReplyDeleteI couldn’t agree with you more that students often struggle solving word problems. As we’ve studied through the module instruction practices and traditional math textbook questions are partly to blame for this. Here’s an article which discusses some reasons why elementary students have difficulties with word problems. http://www.homeschoolmath.net/teaching/word_problems.php The majority of information found in this article has been reviewed before and although the ideas presented are not that new or uncommon, I did however appreciate some thoughts. I like the idea about solving word problems without actually calculating the answers. I feel it’s a good way for students to practice how to read word problems carefully and analyze the information first. Oftentimes students are more focused on what numbers they are given in the qword problems that they don’t take the time to understand what they must do with them first. I also feel that mixing different types of word problems is a good way to avoid students simply following routine questions and forces them to read word problems carefully so that they understand which operation to use.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteTHis was a great Blog. I looked over the Numberphile videos and there are some great one. I love the pie and Chicken Mcnuggets. I also looked at the video called "Monty Hall Problem" which explained probability problems using Monty Hall game show. I loved it as I used to struggle with probability and statistic in high school and this was def very fun to watch. I will look for more videos to show in my classroom. Great post
Thanks