Musings from Mrs. Galvan

There are many lessons in Algebra that in typical math teacher fashion, I just love . Wind-Current rate-time-distance problems are one of them for me. Usually I present a few examples and tell a (true) story of how I have used this knowledge outside of my math teacher role... in my real life... out in the REAL WORLD! They ooh and ahh. They question that I have a real life. *sigh* They listen attentively to my telling of how on two separate occasions I have won the Half-way to Hawaii game. I don't know which airlines play and which do not, but every time I have flown to Hawaii, they play the game of finding when the plane will be half-way there. The captain gives you the rate of the plane, the distance, the time the plane took off and the rate of any tail or head wind. Of course, there is an element of chance involved in the game. Speeds aren't constant the entire flight, but I use my algebra skills to make my educated guess. I have been lucky to win twice. My students are e...

Any lesson that ends with eating cookies is a winner. We scratched the surface of the Double Stuffed Oreo questio n today in my Algebra classes. We made the double stuff assumption, solved the system and tested it with the Triple Double data. Multiple students said things like, "I'm questioning my entire childhood!" Oh drama. #middleschool My handout. We really  just scratched the surface of this. I am in awe of how thoroughly this question has been investigate by... Chris D . Chris L . Dan A. Julie Nathan

Thank you to Square Root of -1 for the idea . Monday my Geometry kiddos will go on a Trig Scavenger Hunt. A colleague happened to have astrolabes ready to use and I happen to own many measuring tapes... so why not? Check out the prompt here . As always, feedback is welcome and appreciated.

Read this. I do want more real life based, ongoing, STEM related projects through which to teach geometry and algebra. The problem is... I don't have them created. I do have lots of mini projects, that are interesting, on par with students' knowledge base, valuable, strongly related to the content, and most importantly, already in my toolbox ! My plate is already full this year with the whole digital portfolio goal, so perhaps I can find just one unit this year to amend slightly so that it fits this model.... Thinking. Image from Paul Curtis.

A colleague sent me this video over a year ago (yikes, I am behind on my email!) and I just got a chance to watch it. It is from 2010 so it might be old news for many, but it's new to me! It gives me much to ponder, a new tweeter to follow and perhaps more to add to the old to do list....

A student at my school used trig to help free a falsely accused man from prison. She also provided math teachers everywhere with another answer to the most annoying question we get: When am I EVER going to use this??? High School Student's Math Skills Contribute to Release of Man Wrongfully Imprisoned for Seventeen Years from David Hinden on Vimeo . Here is a handout on the calculations.