The Olympics Are Coming

http://the2008olympicgames.blogspot.com/ is the website for our new blog about the Olympics. You can add it to googlereader so that you get updates as activities and stories are added to the site.

Demonstration: Explaining Square Numbers

Ruby K. Payne explains in Understanding Learning that mental models are how our minds hold abstract information.

The diagram is a mental model that helps us understand the concept of square numbers. In math a square number is a square number because it physically forms a square. Nine is a square number.

The square root of 9 is 3 because no matter how you draw the lines (horizontal or vertical), you will always get three.

Math & Business Skills

In lemonade stand you learn business and math skills.

The TV will show you a weather forecast for the day. Your ASSETS is how much money you have. The COST PER GLASS shows what it will cost to make EACH GLASS of lemonade. This number changes daily.

Choose how many advertising signs you wish to make. Next decide how much you want to charge per glass. Then decide how many glasses to make. It is a good idea to never spend all of your money – you might need it later if you have a bad day.

Then hit GO and see how well you did. The results screen shows a newspaper that tells you how the weather really was. You can also see how many glasses you sold, your GROSS PROFIT, your EXPENSES, and your NET PROFIT. It may take a little practice to get good at running your lemonade business – good luck and have fun!

Google docs Templates

One of the most important things that we teach students about writing is that they don't have to do all the work. That we all use formats and templates to help us complete our writing tasks. (This is part of the genre theory.) Google Docs now has over 300 templates available for use.

Grammar Tutorial

Take a look at http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/
Some shows would be useful for our students. I have added it to our delicious links. Let us know if you get any feedback from students about the podcasts.

Flickr Credit: DudeCrush

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Demonstration - Signed Numbers

Demonstration for signed numbers. If you click start, you can do the quiz right inside the blog.