PSME/EDUC 41, Spring 2011, Home Page
Green Sheet
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Class 7, June 6, 2011
We had two presentations. Please do yours either next Monday or the last class.
Class 6, May 23, 2011
We spent the class learning about some interesting triangle number (and square number) patterns.
Class 7, May 16, 2011
We discussed several math organizations. All have lots of resources and links at their sites:
National Council of Teachers of Mathematics
California Math Council
Math Association of America
Bridges: Math and the Arts
Class 6, May 9, 2011
We saw a number of puzzles and tricks.
The card trick we saw is a parity card trick, and it is discussed here and here.
We also examined the "tea in water" puzzle with cards and abstractly.
Here's a discussion of that puzzle. Here's the "Prediction Card Trick" handout about variations in that puzzle. Please answer the questions in it for next class.
I also asked you to figure out why a mirror reverses right and left, but not up and down.
Related questions: Does it reverse front and back? What if you put the mirror on the floor?
Class 5, May 2, 2011
We went over some problems from the Julia Robinson Festival held this past weekend at Stanford.
Here is the set of online problems from the festival. We worked on the Divisor Game and Building Blocks. Work on the divisor game for next class. You might take a look at String Polyhedra too!
Please get your journals up to date, and get to the schools and do your hours - don't wait till the last minute!
You can also add to your hours by attending one of the Math Circles.
Class 4, April 25, 2011
We looked at Ken Ken (don't let it become an addiction!) and also Ron Eglash'es TED talk on African fractals. Here's Ron's home page.
Here is the pdf of the Graham schedule, which includes the testing schedule, and which Melinda obtained for us.
Here's that "Cal Teach" event I told you about:
Class 3, April 18, 2011
We saw a video of Dan Meyer on Ted Talks. See if you can explain why nine's complement subtraction works.
Here is Melinda's time sheet for class visits.
I will shortly send you an etherpad site for your journal. Your student ID will be your password.
Keep your journal at the "etherpad site" assigned to you. No one else in the class will have the URL for your journal except the instructor. Etherpads are open source software applications that were bought up by Google, then released for anyone to use. I will look over the journals from time to time and make comments. When you start using it, you will be prompted to choose a color for your entries.
Here's the format for your journal entries. You should have one such entry, using this format, for every day and every class you visit. Enter the most recent journal entry at the top of the page (reverse chronological order).
Day of week and date: Monday, Apr. 4
School: Shirikawa Middle School
Teacher: Lisa Pitino
Time(s) in classes: 10:30 AM - noon
Mathematical topic(s): Linear equations
What exactly you did: I went around room and helped with worksheet problems
Observations, reflections: The students seemed to have trouble understanding the difference between the horizontal and vertical coordinates, etc., etc.
If you want, you can abbreviate by leaving out the 'headings," as follows (or just copy and paste them!)
Monday, Apr. 1
Shirikawa
Pitino
10:30 AM - noon
Topic(s): Linear equations
I went around room and helped with worksheet problems
Observations, reflections: The students seemed to have trouble understanding the difference between the horizontal and vertical coordinates, etc., etc
Here is the school information for those of you able to start this week:
Lead Teacher: Scott McGhee
Other teachers: Nancy Bernaschina
Graham Middle School
1175 Castro Street
Mountain View, CA
650-526-3570
Lead Teacher: Lisa Pitino, Room 209 at Shirakawa School.
Other teachers: Kathy Phillips
George Shirakawa Elementary School (K-8)
665 Wool Creek Drive
San Jose, CA
408-938-3200
The way you total your 30 hours might look something like this:
4 weeks @ 4.5 hours + 4 weeks @ 3 hours
or this:
2 weeks @ 6 hours + 6 weeks @ 3 hours
Class 2, April 11, 2011
We spent the entire class filling out those forms for payment.
Please complete fingerprinting/TB tests if you need to.
Begin your journal entries this week; please let me know your journal site. I recommend either
http://ietherpad.com/
or
http://piratepad.net/front-page/
Graham School appears to be on break this week.
Shirikawa Middle School is at 665 Wool Creek Drive, San Jose, CA 95112, (408) 938-3200, contact teacher is Lisa Pitino.
Graham Middle School is at 1175 Castro St, Mountain View, CA 94040, (650) 526-3570, contact teacher is Scott McGee.
You are allowed two absences from the Monday class.
Class 1, April 4, 2011
Please get your TB test and fingerprinting ASAP.
Please begin keeping a journal for this class, and place it at an etherpad site which you open at either
The fingerprinting needs to be done at the Foothill police dept. office, not at De Anza. They know about the PSME 41 fingerprinting and will not charge you for it. Hours for drop-in are 8 AM to 1 PM or 3 PM to 10 PM. I spoke with Samantha, who's there in the morning.
Here's the De Anza College Health Services site.
Here is their schedule for TB testing; please get it done this week:
TB screening tests (free) are given at the following times with the exception of holidays or unforseen reasons:
Mondays from 9 -10 a.m., 2 - 3 p.m., and 5:30 - 7 p.m.
Tuesdays from 10 -11 a.m., 3 - 4 p.m., and 5:30 - 8 p.m.
No appointments are necessary.
Your TB test must be read 48-72 hours later.
Monday TB tests are read on Wednesday or Thursday and Tuesday TB tests are read on Thursday.
Some Links and handouts which we'll go over this quarter:
"Casting out nines" or mod 9 trick.
Explanation of how digit sums work.
RAFT (Resource Area for Teachers),
Keith Devlin's recent articles on whether multiplication is repeated addition.
"Battleship"
Vi Hart's Math Doodling videos, on stars. Take a look at some of the others she's made.
"Asteroids" least common multiple idea, which is related to star polygons.
Nines Complement subtraction.
Gelosia mulitplication method and some other methods.
Interactive KenKen site, which generates new puzzles daily.
KenKen handout
Handout on Number Pairs
Toothpick puzzles
Algebraic toothpick puzzles
Triangular numbers
Dan Meyer on Ted Talks.
"Pile Problem."
"Prediction Card Trick."