And Now for Something Completely Different! 11/11/11 Binary Fun

110011010001001110001!

That wasn't supposed to mean anything in particular, but it's fun nevertheless. At 11:11 on 11/11/11, my 3rd hour math class had a 1:11 minute dance party. "I Need a Hero" was blasting in the background and the students covered my back board with 11/11 graffiti (some of which said Thanks Vets!) and made wishes for the special day. 

This would have been the perfect moment to drop everything and teach them how to do binary. It was, after all, the last binary day for a very long time. Instead I dropped a couple binary one-liners and called it good. I guess we'll get there some time in the spring, after MCA's and the rest of our standard curriculum is finished. 

Having not learned binary until a few years ago, it was a real eye-opener into a different way of counting. It came up in "The Story of 1", which is a phenomenal DVD about the history of number systems and the evolution of mathematical principles. Surprisingly for a math video, it's actually quite funny too! Towards the end of the movie, the subject of computers and binary counting is introduced with an egg analogy. Using powers of 2, a hard-boiled egg cup is either filled with an egg (switch on!) or it is empty (switch off!). 

For example: 

1 in binary is 2 to the 0 power. So there is one egg cup, with one egg in it. Or "1" in binary.

2 in binary is 2 to the 1st, but no 2 to the 0. So there are 2 cups, with the first filled. "10".

3 in binary is 2 to the 1st PLUS 2 to the 0, So there are 2 cups, with both filled. "11".

4 in binary is 2 to the 2nd, no 2 to the 1st or 0 power. 3 cups, only the first filled... "100". 

and so on... 5 = 101, 6 = 110, 7 = 111...

then at 8 you bump up to 2 to the 3rd power and add a cup. 1000.

This egg analogy makes total sense to kids, especially kinesthetic learners, because they can manipulate a cup or picture of a cup with coins or tiles or actual eggs, and they can practice their powers of two, which in turn helps them to understand the decimal system better. "111" in decimal means something completely different than "111" in binary. This leads to a great discussion on the advantages of various number systems. 

Advanced students can be taught how to add and subtract in binary as well, or how to count in hexadecimal or octal. Who knows if they'll ever use it for anything, but it feels kind of like a secret language and makes them feel really smart! So anyway, back to 11/11/11... the fun of it was to tell students that 111111 in binary is 2 to the 5th + 2 to the 4th + 2 to the 3rd + 2 to the 2nd + 2 to the 1st + 2 to the zero power = 63.

I think it is extremely important to pause and elaborate on teachable moments. It may be a subject or conversation that has nothing to do with your goals and objectives for the day, and that's okay. Connecting to humorous, educational, artistic, historical, political and/or occasional controversial ideas in your classroom is what kids actually remember when they look back. 

The real challenge is leading the conversation back to math in as meaningful a way as possible, without cutting them off before everyone with their hands up got to share. Funny, isn't it? How many hands go up when you stray off topic to something personal? And how few hands are raised during morning warm-ups or instructional time? Interesting....

Time to assign class nap time

Today is less of a blog and more of a diary and general complaint directed at the pointless institution called Daylight Savings time. Who really is benefiting from more sunlight in the morning anyway? All the farmers have head lights on their combines these days.

Today at school was really tiring. More than half the student body looked like zombies even with the supposed "extra hour" of sleep. It just made the day feel all out of whack. So I think tomorrow I will assign a mandatory 5-minute nap in each hour. No drooling allowed.

Staff also got extra zombified by showing up 15 minutes early to work to practice our "Thriller" flash dance moves. It's gonna be epic. Thanks to our new choir director for choreographing the whole thing! Best exercise (or should I say only exercise) I've gotten before 8 in the morning in longer than I can remember.

Nighty night all. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZ

What do rabid Zombie Math Teachers do all day?

Happy Daylight Savings everyone! 

As I ramp up for a free extra hour of zombie fun,   ( aka house cleaning )  

I started thinking about how much of my time is actually dedicated to teaching. Not just the physical act of teaching; but the prep involved, the meetings about teaching and the students, the parent communication, the website development/updating, the lesson planning, professional development, transportation to and from, paper correcting, and of course plain old thinking about teaching. 

The graph above was made at graphjam.com which has probably popped up in your search results if you've ever looked at anything funny that happened to have a pop culture reference in it. The other top site is of course icanhascheezburger.com where you will find a lot of cat-related humor with extremely poor grammar. I like to paste items from both sites randomly into my Smart lessons to grab the student's attention and make them laugh (thus relieving tension). 

My pie chart makes me laugh, but also makes me want to cry. Watching pay check after pay check get wasted on heating and garbage and water bills, cable/internet bills, gas, groceries and not much else... I wonder why I keep doing this! I guess because I love it. But what I truly want to know, is am I the only one? What do other teachers' pie charts look like? Especially Language Arts teachers? 

After two attempts at assigning math essays to my classes, I can thoroughly grasp just how much time Language Arts professionals spend grading papers. If they do it carefully. It is so easy to write 10/10 on a paper, add a couple smiley faces or stars here or there, or put a check mark and your initials on your paper. But kids catch on really quick to your lack of feedback, and stop trying so hard to please you. 

So how much is your time really worth!?!? Mine, taking my salary into account and dividing my teaching-related activities into it, is about $6.50 per hour. I believe that is less than minimum wage. What, then, is the magic cycle breaker to get out of this habit? Stop caring so much about my students? Stop trying to innovate and improve my lessons? Stop attending meetings where I collaborate and vent to my coworkers? Call in sick once per week to keep up? Oh wait... writing sub plans takes twice as long as being there myself. 

The only magic answer I can think of.... drum roll... SLEEP LESS. Except for tonight of course. Gaining an extra hour of sleep will probably mean I'll just stay up an hour later. Welcome back, Zombie Math Teacher.

November Book Sale is ON!

 Coordinate Graph Art for Grades 6-8 (teacher edition, with keys included) is now on sale for $9.99!

Coordinate Graph Art: Student Edition is also on sale for $7.99! Order a set for your classroom today!

The best part to ordering in bulk through Amazon.com is the free shipping on orders over $25. Amazon is also running a 4 for 3 promotion that will automatically credit your account upon checkout. Most school districts will process a P.O. from their site so buy now while the sale is still on.

Aligns with NCTM Geometry standards in the areas of coordinate plane geometry and transformations.

How to eat your 1-2-3's

http://www.zazzle.com/eat_sleep_math_tshirt

As I paw through my sons' Halloween candy stashes, I started thinking about the many ways that I can incorporate food into classroom math lessons. Aside from my previous posts, there have got to be a lot more ideas out there that I can steal. So I googled "Math + Food" and found all sorts of goodies. Happy eating!

Oh and by the way I'm always looking for new math shirts... add this to my Christmas list, please Santa!?!? Probably a "medium" since it's Men's. Kay thanks.

Pauline's 40 Ideas for Mixing Food and Math - I clicked on this first because I read it too fast and thought it said "Paula Dean's 40 Ideas"... Oops! Still good though. Maybe with less butter on top. My favorite is the geometric solids with toothpicks and marshmallows. Great for vertices and edges too! The air can be the faces.

Vi Hart's Mathematical Food is by far the prettiest site I've been to in a while. Very good applications for musical / spatial learners. He has beautiful and tasty food applications, a blog, music clips and beadwork, and perfect for leftover Halloween treats - Sierpinski's triangle with candy corn!

Measure geometric shapes and proportions with great ideas from Miss Celliana's Files. That bagel and the cheese look scrum-diddly-umptious. And I could see students making somewhat less advanced, but still yummy versions of the cupcake.

Wondering if there are resources in print? Got some budget money left to burn? Check out FoodMaster. The goal is to integrate food science with math in a variety of settings. Current literature is for grades 3-5, but they are looking for partners interested in expanding to K-1 or middle school. We have an "Edible Classroom" student garden housed outside our school, and there are many opportunities to teach life skills here with seasonal foods.

And now for something completely different! Math Goes Pop! The tag line says "Ruminations on the Intersection Between Mathematics and Popular Culture", and that's exactly what I'm seeing so far. There is a tab specifically for Math and Food, highlighting random tidbits like pricing mistakes, combo meal combinations, and Top Chef. There are another 10+ sensational topics like "Animal Math" and "Math in the Movies" on their own tabs, to keep even a non-blogging math teacher and students intrigued for many a day.

Yummy Math has a pile of food-related ideas as well, some of which I've never seen before. Along with interdisciplinary topics, sports ideas, business math, and the very random lessons on "anytime math".

Enough food for thought. Which makes me hungry. For some pumpkin pi.