Edgalaxy - Where Education and Technology Meet

An excellent collection of Fermi problems for your class.

Kevin Cummins — Tue, 29 May 2012 03:37:27 +0000

Enrico Fermi is the father of "solving maths problems we will never kown the exact answer to." Such as how many leaves are on all the trees in Central Park. They are great for getting students to think mathematically and use problem solving skills.

Fermi questions often require students to make reasonable assumptions and estimates about the situation in order to come up with an approximate answer. Students should be reminded of the need to be able to explain and justify what they did when coming up with their solutions. Students’ answers may differ from each other, but if students have made sensible estimates and assumptions then the different answers should be “close” to each other. Take advantage of opportunities to discuss students’ different solution strategies and the effect of assumptions and estimates. You can also invent your own Fermi questions based on class experiences (e.g., after a trip to the zoo you might ask students how many fish are consumed by the seals in one year).

1) How many people could you fit into the classroom? How many soccer balls?

2) How old are you if you are a million seconds old? A million hours old? A million days old?

3) Could you fit $1,000,000 worth of $1 coins in your classroom? What about a billion dollars worth of $1 coins?

4) How much money is spent in the school canteen each day? In a week? Over the year?

5) If all the people in Australia joined hands and stretched themselves out in a straight line, how long would it reach?

6) How long would it take to count to a million?

7) If all the people in the world moved to Victoria, how crowded would it be?

8) How many cups of water are there in a bath tub? What about in an Olympic pool?

9) How many grains of rice are in a 10kg bag?

10) How many pages would be needed to show a million stars?
**********
11) How many children are needed to have a mass the same as an elephant?

12) How many packets are needed to measure a single line of M&Ms to a distance of 100m?

13) How many jelly beans fill a bucket?

14) How long would it take to drive to the moon (if you could!)?

15) What is the total mass in kilograms of all the students in your school?

16) What is the weight of garbage thrown away by each family every year?

17) How many pizzas are eaten by our class in one year?

18) If you had a stack of $2 coins as tall as Mt Kosciusko, what would it be worth? Could you fit all the coins in your bedroom?

19) How far could you walk in one year?

20) How much water does your household use each week? Can you answer this without using a water bill?

21) How many blades of grass on a school oval?

22) Spend exactly $1,000,000 using things for sale in the newspaper

23) How much paper is used at our school each week?

24) Imagine the earth is at one end of the school oval and the moon is at the other end. How far away is the sun?

25) How many beats will your heart make in a lifetime?

26) How many bricks are there in one wall of the classroom? The whole school?

27) How many books are read by children in our school/class in one year? About how many pages is that?

28) What distance will a ball point pen write?

29) How many times did the wheel of the bus turn on the class
excursion?

30) How big a block of chocolate could you make using all the chocolate eaten by the class in a
year?

31) How long would our class have to save to buy a car?

32) Get students to pose their own

questions …
Sharing and discussing strategies is paramount to this work.

Some useful information:
Radius of the earth: about 6,400 km
Distance of the earth from the sun: about 150 million km
Distance of the moon from the earth: about 380,000 km
Population of the world: about 6 billion
Population of Australia: about 20 million
Population of Melbourne: about 3.5 million
Area of Tasmania: about 68000 square km
Area of Victoria: about 228000 square km
Area of Australia: about 7,700,000 sq. km
Height of Mt Kosciusko: 2230m

Thanks to the DEECD for these problems.

Blooms Taxonomy Poster for Teachers and Students.

Kevin Cummins — Mon, 28 May 2012 05:02:37 +0000

Bloom's Taxonomy has helped teachers plan lessons and design instruction for decades now.

While other theories and systems have come and gone, Bloom's taxonomy appears to have become the most commonly used standard in many educational settings.

In the 1990's, Lorin Anderson and a group of psychologists updated the taxonomy in the hope that it would have more relevance for 21st century students and teachers, transforming the nouns to verbs and making some other seemingly small but significant changes.

The Blooming Butterfly poster was designed by the Learning Today product development team as a tribute to Bloom and Anderson and to the educators all over the world that continue to implement their vision. We hope that it will serve as a visual reminder for teachers as they continue to guide students to become better thinkers, just as Bloom imagined many years ago!

The Poster Can be Downloaded here.

TED ED - Pick of the week

Kevin Cummins — Sun, 27 May 2012 10:49:32 +0000

Each Week we will be rummaging through TED-ED for the best video lessons to share with your students. This weeks video is One or One: Or is it?

One bag of apples, one apple, one slice of apple -- which of these is one unit? Explore the basic unit of math (explained by a trip to the grocery store!) and discover the many meanings of one.

Lesson Plan: Writing a Diamante Poem

Kevin Cummins — Fri, 25 May 2012 03:47:13 +0000

This handout is a great tool for teaching kids how to write a Diamante Poem. Diamante poems are a great way to teach student about Synonyms and Antonyms and have a bit of fun in the process. This lesson plan is suitable for students from years 3 - 10 and will easily fill one literacy session.

You can download my handout here and also learn more about Diamante Poems at Readwritethink.org here.

Writing a Diamante Poem

Terrible math lessons Hollywood is teaching our kids

Kevin Cummins — Thu, 24 May 2012 22:49:11 +0000

The two videos below take a look at the gross mathematical errors that are found in some of our biggest Hollywood Blockbusters.

They might prove as a great starting point to a lesson by watching some of the sequences and then working through them as a class just to highlight how inaccurate some of these are.

If you know of any other great movies please let us know.

Bloom's iPad Taxonomy

Kevin Cummins — Wed, 23 May 2012 10:35:00 +0000

Langwitches has recently just put together another taxonomy of the iPad. It has some really great stuff in it. For the full article click here.

Great tech support site for teachers and students

Kevin Cummins — Wed, 23 May 2012 10:17:52 +0000

Tech Ease is a great resource for teachers and students to learn about computers and basic tech support. It is is broken down into Mac, Windows, and accessibility uses.

Under each, there are subtopics such as using computers in the classroom, images, file sharing, chat, videos, email, hardware, the internet, and much more. There are ideas on using technology for accessibility with disabled students also.

Tech Ease is easy to navigate and has a huge amount of information available for educators. This is site you should definitely share with your colleagues and students.

Learn how to teach Palindrome's with 'Weird Al'

Kevin Cummins — Wed, 23 May 2012 09:52:56 +0000

Weird Al is clearly my most cited musician in literacy classes, particularly when looking at poetry. Last week our kids looked at using Palindromes in their poetry and Weird Al' delivered again with his rip off of Bob Dylan's Subterranean Homesick Blues.

"Rats live on no evil Star"

Video to Teach about Personal Pronouns

Kevin Cummins — Wed, 23 May 2012 09:49:46 +0000

This video does a great job teaching kids how to use personal pronouns by giving them a song that will really get stuck in their heads. It is reallly quite effective with primary / elementary students but will be effective on students of all ages.

Everyday Maths for Grown-Ups

Kevin Cummins — Wed, 23 May 2012 03:13:52 +0000

I very rarely promote books or products on Edgalaxy but I can personally and highly recommend this one by Kjartan Poskitt, after a parent in my grade gave me a copy to borrow. As a result our school bought 10 to on sell in the office as it was just so practical.

Everyday Maths for Grown-ups is an excellent resource for teachers to give to parents to teach them how maths is taught in modern classrooms. And I recommend every school buying 10 or so copies to have in their office for parents to borrow or purchase.

Here is the speil from the publishers - but I can personallly say as a teacher it is a must have for confused parents.

Day-to-day life is full of scenarios where your skill with numbers is tested, whether it's dividing up your share of the restaurant bill, or working out whether you've been overcharged at the checkout. So many of us try to avoid these basic sums at all costs, waiting for someone else to step in with the answer; but "Everyday Maths for Grown-Ups" is the perfect solution! It includes chapters on: How to Check a Till Receipt Quickly; Long division; Multiplying and Dividing by 10, 100 or 1,000; Money and Percentages; Converting metres, Litres and Grams; and, Angles, Triangles and Trig. This book contains all the shortcuts, fun tricks and new approaches you need to tackle even complex calculations with confidence.

You can get it below via Amazon. If you have any great recommendations we'd love to hear of them.