I was playing around with Prezi tonight, and this is what I came up with for organizing middle-school math topics:
Does it work? Can you see the embedded Prezi applet? Suggestions welcome on either the format of the presentation or (more importantly) the organization of math ideas!! Are there important topics or questions that I am missing?? I am definitely teaching middle school next year (with I think a high-school class thrown in there somewhere, but I'm not so sure about the latter.) A part of me is fully nervous about this going-back-to-middle-school goodness. Another part of me is very excited about all of the poss!b!l!t!es!!! :)
PS. You might have noticed that I didn't bother with adding flashy effects to the presentation. That's intentional... It's kind of my pet peeve when the tech takes more of the spotlight than the content. If I do decide to incorporate some Prezi stuff next year to help my kids draw mental connections between big ideas, I'm going to keep it as vanilla and non-distracting as possible.
I'm not expert enough at MS curriculum to comment on the content, but just wanted to respond that the Prezi played fine!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kate! :)
ReplyDeleteMy initial reaction was that these are "Big Ideas" throughout the math curriculum, not just in middle school. But the language seems good for middle school ideas (and many of the little bullets *are* more MS focused). This isn't a critique, just something I noticed/found interesting.
ReplyDeleteI will also be teaching Middle school next year. I'm looking forward to it. Hope you are too.
@betweenthenumbers Wheeee! I'm pretty excited/nervous about teaching middle school next year. I am looking forward to re-discovering the math blogosphere through the lens of a middle-school teacher, so we should definitely trade ideas and stories!! :)
ReplyDeleteBy the way, the way I think about middle school math is that it's the transition phase from the concrete to abstract, and also the introduction to multi-step problem solving and reasoning. So, I think it makes sense to me that the break down would look a lot like upper level maths, except with less depth of skills and more building of fundamental concepts!
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think??