Ed Tech 4 Math

This morning, when I went online (my browser opens to MSN), and had scanned the homepage any faster, I would have missed two unique articles!

At first, the article “20 Thing You Didn’t Know About … Pencils” flashed before my eyes.   So, naturally, being the math teacher that I am, I opened the link and read about 20 things I didn’t know about pencils.  Dean Christopher (Discovery Magazine) lists some very interesting factoids about our beloved pencil.

Did you know …

• The average pencil has enough graphite to draw a line about 35 miles long
• The first American pencil factory opened in 1861 in New York City
• The word pencil derives from the Latin “penicilus,” meaning “little tail”

You can read the rest of Christopher’s pencil facts at “20 Things You Didn’t Know About … Pencils“.

And if pencils weren’t interesting enough, the next headline to catch my eyes was “ ‘Smoot’ reaches new heights in MIT.”

I can’t remember why I opened this link, but when I did, I read about the 50^th anniversary of using a “Smoot” as a unit of measurement.  In 1958, Oliver Smoot and his fraternity brothers at MIT measured the Harvard Bridge using Oliver as the unit of measurement!    They found that the bridge was approximately 364.4 Smoots long (Oliver measured 5 feet and 7 inches).  Smoot later became the chairman of the American National Standards Institute.

So, how could I not look for more information on the Smoot?

I didn’t really come across anything more than what I had already read.  But, I did find a nice article from Cross & Crescent, a publication from Smoot’s fraternity.  And I found on Google calculator that 35 feet = 6.26865672 Smoots.

Ferris Bueller said it best:  “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

At the beginning of the school year, one of my fourth grade teachers, asked me if I would come to her class and introduce the Product Game to her students as a way of having some fun while practicing multiplication facts (we’ve done this for the past 3 years). 

Each time I visited or walked through Miss Rogowski’s classroom this past quarter, we did a little update with the students on the progress they were making with working on their multiplication facts and built up the excitement of me coming to class to “play a fun game” with them and the ice-cream party they would have at the end of the year as a celebration for their mastery of multiplication facts.   It doesn’t take much to excite fourth graders!  It got to the point that when I walked in, some students would mention right away where they were…one student in particular continually reminded me that he had already memorized all his 12s! 

Yesterday marked the end of the first grading quarter.  So, Miss Rogowski and I decided that it would be a perfect day to play the Product Game.

The object of the game

The Product Game is fairly easy to play.  Get four squares in a row (horizontally, vertically, or diagonally) by using the factors 1 – 9 to create products located on the game board.

NCTM’s Illuminations website [1] features the online applet that the Connected Mathematics Project created to use the Product Game online.  There are no bells and whistles to this applet, but it’s worth a mention and recommendation to all math teachers because the game is fun – I can attest to that! 

I first came across the Product Game when I taught sixth grade math using the Connected Mathematics Project [2] textbook series.  The game was part of the Investigations in Prime Time: Factors and Multiplies (1996), the book focusing on Number Sense (GCF, LCM, prime numbers, etc.).  I always had success with students in playing the game and couldn’t see just using it in sixth grade.  I’d recommend the game to any group of students who need a way to practice their multiplication facts!

Adaptations to the game

The Connected Mathematics Project revisits the Product Game in the seventh grade series in Accentuate the Negative (1996).  This time, positive and negative factors are used to play the game.

Teachers can easily enough change the format of this game to fit the needs of their students. You can recreate the game to fit the needs of any students:

• Change the factors to be used to 4 – 12 (don’t forget to change the products in the game board!)
• Make the game board smaller and decrease the number of factors for students who are struggling.
• Go back to the good old days of playing bingo and use some of the variations of that game to win:  four corners or blackout.
• Play in trios

Please feel free to post any other ideas on how to adapt the Product Game to fit the needs of students!

References:

[1] National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.  Illuminations. The Product Game.

[2] Prime Time: Factors and Multiples. Connected Mathematics Project. G. Lappan, J. Fey, W Fitzgerald, S. Friel and E. Phillips. Dale Seymour Publications (1996), pp. 17‑25.