KIDPROJ Math Around Us 1997

This Kidproj project ended in 1998.

When most of us think about math, we think about it as a subject taught in school, outside of the context of our day to day lives. But in truth, math is a fundamental part of our everyday lives. Students participating in the Math Around Us project will explore different ways to look at math in the real world.

Project Moderators:

Laurie Williams
Dennis Buccola

Duration of the Project:

Math Around Us will run from October to the end of May. Because it is made up of different activities to be introduced one per month, you can participate in all or part of the project, whichever best fits your needs. Each month, we will introduce a new activity.

For open-ended activities, you can begin to send information to the KIDPROJ list any time after the announced start date and up until the end of May.

For activities with deadlines, there are 2 of these, you begin at the announced start date and end at the announced end date, because these activities are interactive and require sticking to deadline.

Participating in the Project:

All participants must follow guidelines established for joining in on KIDPROJ projects.

Student work is to be posted on KIDPROJ, while any teacher discussion of the project will occur on KIDPROJ-COORD.

Participants must register to participate the project. Read through the activity summaries and choose which activities you'd like to join in on. Fill in the registration form below.

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Math Around Us Projects

Title: Math Curse Revisited
Start Date: October 1
End Date: Open throughout duration of project.
Summary: In Jon Scieszka's book, Math Curse, a little girl wakes up feeling she's been cursed...a "math curse", because everywhere she looks, everything she sees, everything that happens to her...she sees as some sort of math problem, because her teacher has told her "YOU KNOW, you can think of almost everything as a math problem."

For example, when she looks in her closet, she sees that she has "...1 white shirt, 3 blue shirts, 3 striped shirts, and that 1 ugly plaid shirt that Uncle Zeno sent me." She then ponders the following questions:

1. How many shirts is that all together?
2. How many shirts would I have if I threw away that awful plaid shirt?
3. When will Uncle Zeno quit sending me such ugly shirts?

FOR OUR PROJECT---The teacher shares the story with their class. Kids then think of their next day "mathmatically"...seeing how many ways they can find math problems creeping up on them throughout the day. On the list, they'd share *their* "math curse" days.

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Title: Math in Careers
Start Date: November1
End Date: Open throughout duration of project.
Summary: Students interview different professional people...ie folks with jobs (including homemakers) and find out how they use math in their fields...to help show that the math you learn now *will* be relevant to your future. Interviews would be shared on the list.

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Title: Personal Measurement
Start Date: December1
End Date: Open throughout duration of project.
Summary: Using either metric or standard forms of measurement (for example-weight, length, temperature), students develop their own equivalents. For example, 1 pound =1 cantaloupe. That way, we can compare the two systems of measurement, and also give the kids some jumping off point of reference for estimation.

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Title: Mapping It Out
Start Date: January1
End Date: April 1
Summary:This one is a bit more involved and requires interaction and use of mail and/or transmitting of Gifs.

1. Each school draws out their site plan, including things that could be seen from an aerial view. (Using cm. graph paper)
2. Students divide the drawing up into quadrants and then write up a description of the site, quadrant by quadrant...to send to the list.
3. Participant schools take the written directions, and translate them into site maps on their end.
4. When School A has completed drawing rendition of School B's site, they send it to School B (with a sealed drawing of School A's site). They follow this procedure for each school that they get a written description of.
5. Each school draws a computer rendition of their site to go up on the web for comparison.

Schools may need to communicate with each other for further details or explanations, should written descriptions be weak. In this project, they'd be using estimation in linear measurement, drawing to scale, proportion, writing in math.

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Title: Math in the News
Start Date: February1
End Date: Open throughout duration of the project.
Summary: Students review headlines for a week, looking for math in the news. When they find a headline that has some correlation to math, they are to analyze it:

Could it be an actual amount, or is it an estimate?

What "kind of math" is it?-For example: ratio, percent, area, volume, length, weight, rank, cardinal number-indicating quantity, ordinal number-position in a series.

They would then send something like this to KIDPROJ:

Headline: "Party peace No. 1 in GOP chief's eye"
Date: August 1, 1997
Newspaper: Austin American Statesman
Estimate or actual: actual
Purpose: rank
Restate it without numbers: Party peace main focus of GOP chief.

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Title: Make Math Fit
Start Date: March1
End Date: Open throughout duration of the project.
Summary:Students first try to find possible answers to estimates below, then they come up with sets that other students try to "fit".

They'd first send us a reply to this:

It's about 100 years old:
It takes about 1 hour to do:
It could happen twice a year:
It could hold 30 potatoes:
It lasts about 15 minutes:

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Title: Wait a Minute!
Start Date: April1
End Date: Open throughout duration of the project.
Summary: Students come up with things that you can do in...or that last for 60 seconds.

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We're Coming For a Visit

Title: We're Coming for a Visit
Start Date: May1
End Date:May 31
Summary: Students plan trip to visit each participating site. What route will you take? What will your mileage be?

Students to find the shortest route to visit each participating site.

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This page is posted by Richard Turnbull, and was last updated on Jan. 3,1998. rturnbul@nwrain.com

Information Contact: Patti Weeg, Title 1 Computer Teacher, Delmar El. School, Delmar, Maryland, USA. Home Page: http://www.globalclassroom.org

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