Comments on: Teaching Math in a Disaster Area

By: Tsee Lee

Tsee Lee — Sun, 28 Aug 2016 20:53:50 +0000

How about CS Unplugged activities? These are intended to teach computational thinking without computers, which helps math and other subjects too.

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 16:34:09 +0000

What did you do?!

By: Megan

Megan — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 15:54:06 +0000

Many of us did the same years back in the San Diego wildfires… They were looking for teacher volunteers at Qualcomm Stadium to offer “school” and learning activities. One of my top teaching experiences.

By: David Srebnick

David Srebnick — Thu, 18 Aug 2016 00:19:04 +0000

I had some thoughts of individual activities that don’t require much in terms of supplies. Perhaps this list of possibilities will spark some other ideas.
1) Practicing mental math, or teaching quick computation tricks
2) Estimating: Every so often I give my eighth graders a picture of something and ask them to estimate some aspect of the picture: How many miles of pipes in the Empire State Building, how many rooms in the pictured hotel, how tall is a building (given a picture with people nearby as a reference), etc.
3) There are a lot of 3-act problems that would be great.
4) Origami – based math
5) Interesting way of teaching about the Cartesian plane: human graphing. http://www.shastacoe.org/uploaded/SCMP2/Spring_Content_Day_2014/1_3-5_Human_Graphing_Activity_PDF.pdf
6) STEM activity: each team gets 20 pieces of thick spaghetti, 3′ of thread, 3′ of tape, and a marshmallow. Build a free-standing structure that will support the marshmallow. Highest one wins.
7) NCTM Illuminations has lots of possibilities. One activity that comes to mind is “capture/recapture.” https://illuminations.nctm.org/Lesson.aspx?id=2528
8) Math related to games, probability, dice, coin flips.

By: Vishakha Parvate

Vishakha Parvate — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 21:27:33 +0000

Not strictly Math but this series of videos is a great way to keep inquiry alive – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCXp0zvGUKc&list=PL3A74E2EA2D59A0F6

They are from the series Toys from Trash – created for working with rural youth in India.

By: Tracy Zager

Tracy Zager — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 17:07:25 +0000

Perfect last sentence, Dan.

By: David Wees

David Wees — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 16:59:27 +0000

I like the two resources you suggest. I’m assuming we are working on “what would you recommend in terms of teaching mathematics under these constraints”?

I also think that Number Talks seem like they would be a helpful routine to use (although recording strategies kids come up with seems like it would be hard).

Hopefully other people have suggestions as well.

David