Financial Literacy

Financial Literacy is very important and the Ministry of Education has many resources outlining it's importance to all curriculum especially math. Math skills can be used in many real life financial decisions the students will be making in their lives.  Please check it out.

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/surveyliteracy.html

Mechanical Devices and Geometry

Mechanical Devices and Geometry

If you've ever considered where to find real life examples to be used in your geometry lessons you have to look no further than the companies who develop Mechanical CAD or Computer Added Design software. These websites are filled with several video and image examples of how geometry is used in design to build devices that are used in everyday life. Simply by going to google and typing in Mechanical CAD provides links to limitless examples.

Here are a few;

Examples of their use in a classroom could be at the beginning of a lesson as a hook or breaking down the image to define the various solids, cube, cylinder, sphere, triangular prism, cone, cuboid etc. You could use images and make a game of "finding the solids" and then relate that back how it is used in real life.  

Other opportunities to involve these images into your lessons is to underline how important language is involved in communicating the information presented. Some of the images show dimensions and relationships between parts., units of measure and scale.

With so many various images you can differentiate what is shown by providing more and less complex images.

Scratch

My son is very into Scratch Jr. right now. I think coding is very important skill for all students to learn. ( I am new and learning just like the students) Scratch Jr. is a great start and even students in Grade 7 and 8 can use their integers, transformations, and spatial reasoning skills while having fun. Scratch is amazing and students can use so many math skills while they learn to code. 

https://www.scratchjr.org/

Here is a gallery of scratch projects that teach math concepts. Check it out!

https://scratch.mit.edu/studios/6423/

Math with Context: Resources for Grade 8/9 First Nations Students

As some may know, much of my experience teaching the last two years has been with First Nation students. I arrived at my teaching assignment with some knowledge of First Nation themes and curriculum, but in my mind I thought, "I'm teaching a Math curriculum, how different could that look from what I learned growing up and in teacher's college?" I admit that I had little conception as to how much context can affect our students in every subject, including math. 

I'd like to share a resource that I found very helpful when ensuring that what I was teaching reflected the realities of my students. Although this is a document developed in British Columbia, many First Nations in Ontario share similar themes and connections. A few examples of overarching themes and how they can be integrated culturally with math are:

• Hunting/Fishing: Statistics, Rates and Ratios, Percentages
• Food and Nutrition: Percentage, Fractions
• Mapping/Directions/Travel: Pythagoreon Thereom, Proportional Reasoning, Surface Area, Volume
• Traditional Games: Data Presentation, Chance and Probability

http://www.fnesc.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/PUB-LFP-Math-First-Peoples-8-9-for-Web.pdf

There are worksheets and lesson plans in the above document. These documents can be wonderful additions to our current units, not only for First Nation students, but for all Canadian students looking to broaden their knowledge of Aboriginal culture and themes. Often we teach math as a "standalone" subject, but I think any opportunity to reach all students is valuable and should be utilized.