Gwen Mueller is an IT Professional, #dnd Gamer-girl, #coffee drinker, geek in Secondary Education, editor on tumblr #education, curating #science, and #tech resources to inspire lifelong learning with 1/4 cup of #fun.
And, in a separate, ongoing study of nearly 500 preschoolers, Ms. Cameron found about a third tested high in both executive-function skills—such as following directions amid distractions—and visual-motor skills, such as cutting paper. Children who performed well in either or both executive-function and visual-motor skills achieved well in both math and reading achievement and class behavior later on in the early-elementary grades.
“It’s the children who are low in both who are struggling,” Ms. Cameron said. The more quickly children become automatic in mentally coordinating an action or repeating a design, the more they can free up working memory and organize their thinking for more abstract problems.
Most public school teachers feel unprepared to teach math and reading to the Common Core standards that are rolling out in 45 states and the District, according to a poll of 800 teachers released Friday by the American Federation of Teachers.
While a clear majority — 75 percent — of teachers surveyed by the union said they support the Common Core, less than one-third said their school districts have given them the training and resources to teach to the new standards.
Math makes people feel stupid. It hurts to feel stupid.
It’s hard to realize this unless you’ve experienced it firsthand. Luckily, I have (although it didn’t feel so lucky at the time). So here is my tale of mathematical failure. See if it sounds familiar…
This is a great story illustrating what struggling math students look and feel like.
Newton informs the class that they must take measurements and record data on this new planet. To repair their ship and return to Earth, they need to solve math and science problems at each station on the planet Entramedon.
Concrete objects — such as toys, tiles and blocks — that students can touch and move around, called manipulatives, have been used to teach basic math skills since the 1980s. Use of manipulatives is based on the long-held belief that young children’s thinking is strictly concrete in nature, so concrete objects are assumed to help them learn math concepts.
“These findings suggest that it is easier for children to use objects in mathematical tasks when those objects have maximum ‘bling’ and minimum recognizability,” McNeil said.
The movie, “The Biggest Story Problem,” written and directed by Scott Laidlaw and Jennifer Lightwood, is determined to focus on ineffective math education in the U.S. and provide solutions to get the U.S. back on track. The movie features teachers from around the country, from Roots and Wings Community School in New Mexico to Florida Virtual School in Florida, the first virtual school in the U.S. These teachers are determined to find alternative ways to engage their students in math and turn their attention to countries that excel in math education, like Finland. A turning point in the film comes during a teacher development retreat, when the group of teachers commit to making math more engaging, deeper learning process through the use of interactive computer games in the classroom.
A new study, published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, suggests that relatively simple twists on the familiar high-speed, high-pressure math quiz can level the field of classroom competition.
A study published in Child Development, the top-ranked educational psychology journal, provides some of the strongest evidence yet that gesturing may have a unique effect on learning. Teachers in the United States tend to use gestures less than teachers in other countries.
“Gesturing can be a very beneficial tool that is completely free and easily employed in classrooms,” said Kimberly Fenn, study co-author and assistant professor of psychology at Michigan State University. Students who learned from the gesture videos performed better on a test given immediately afterward than those who learned from the speech-only video.
Glancing without counting, which area contains more dots?
This ability –making the comparison without counting–is supported by the approximate number system. (Formal experiments control for things like the total amount of “dot material” in each field, and so on.)
The ability depends not on the absolute difference in number of dots, but on the ratio. Adults can discriminate ratios as low as 11:10. Infants can perform this task, but the ratio of the difference in dots must be much greater, closer to 2:1.
Many researchers believe that this approximate number system is the scaffold for an understanding of the cardinal values of number.
My work as a public artist is specific to the discovery and interpretation of connections between people and culture through interactive, participatory visual art. For the last four years, Green School math teacher Nathan Affield and I have teamed up to create murals that combine art and mathematics to empower students and connect them to their communities in Brooklyn, New York. These projects build lasting relationships and help students realize their strengths.
Physical Impossibilities in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic a.k.a. the best physics video you’ll watch today.
NOTE: The physics in this might not be 100% correct, but this was more for fun than actual science/calculations. Also we had to give it a rating for how physically correct it was, I only used XP and RP which basically meant physics outside this universe.
Yes, it has happened. “Physical Impossibilities in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.” For our project, we had to find three scenes from any movie or TV show and use physics to find out if something was or wasn’t possible. I got 100% on it.
