Why do so many students HATE MATH? … um, you know, BOREDOM

According to ‘Bored Out of Their Minds’, an article by ZACHARY JASON in The Harvard Ed Magazine (2017):

Boredom accounts for nearly a third of the variation in student achievement. 

Half of high school dropouts cite boredom as their primary motivator for leaving.

Boredom begins for Math students at Grade 6 when students (Common Core Standards, USA) tackle more abstract concepts such as linear eqns, exponents, probability, geometry and so on.

Math curriculums in the USA, UK & Australia all demand students solve REAL LIFE problems. Too often these are of the type:

Q. Ronaldo has tethered his goat on a 12ft rein in the corner of a 20ft square field. What area can the goat graze?

THE ANS: Who cares?

Simple.

Ask students maths questions which have answers they want to know.

Students really don’t care about Ronaldo’s goat, but here are some questions which involve intriguing answers they might want to work out. And many of these questions involve funny or age-relevant activities, which also helps engagement.

1. Mean, Median STATS: Mean, Median and Coffee: Busting an Urban Myth

2. Parabolas: Can you beat the 12-14 yo World Record for a Watermelon Pip spit?

3. Geometry: Build a Freestanding Tower

Rates (Speed) & Units:

4a. The Terrifying Math of Running from a bear

USA Units

METRIC UNITS

4b. How old is your hair?

5. Decimals, %, Volume: What Volume of alcohol is lethal for teens?

6. Decimals, Algebra, Weight Units

How much blood can a kid lose and survive?

USA UNITS

Metric Units

Graph Hunger Game Math

7. GEOMETRY. Angles

Why killer heels can kill!

Any Topic:

8. Middle School Math Photo Scavenger Hunt

9. Write Your Own Math Song

Space Math Song here

10. Make a Math Poster

EVEN TEACHERS GET BORED!!!

The average time it takes an audience at a conference to switch off is 11 minutes. Keep in mind this audience is, at least, being paid to be bored witless.

Outdoor Math Adventures: Grade 3 – 5

It’s Autumn in UK & FALL in the USA so it’s the perfect time for a little bit of outdoor math for Grade 3-5 with AUTUMN leaves. Of course, you don’t need FALL LEAVES for this exercise, but it is colorful.

This fab idea comes from Juliet Robertson, an outdoor education consultant in Scotland. Her blog Creative star learning is one of the most inspiring outdoor maths blogs you will find.

Check out Mathpig’s protractor joke here.

Another fab idea from Juliet Robertson.

 

The Simple Math of Cheap Ice Cream & Why It Melts So Fast

Discovery Magazine: Home Made Ice Cream

More ice cream science: the scoop baking

Giant Easter Egg Maths … METRIC

Good News for Chocoholics

To get the right texture Easter Eggs are made from sugar or sucrose and not from corn syrup. But chocolate contains lots and lots of sugar.

………………………………………………..

Guylian Sea Shells:

Weight Sea Shell: 120 g

Weight Sugar: 48g

% sugar = 48/120 x 100 = 40%

………………………………………………………………..

………………………………………………………………

This is a Guylian Luxury Easter Egg. It can also be used as a designer handbag, I guess.

Guylian Easter Eggs:

Weight Easter Egg: 100g

Weight Sugar: 52g

% sugar = 52/100 x 100 = 52%

You’ll find nutrition data here.

…………………………………………………….

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Easter Challenge:

You will find the largest Chocolate Easter Egg ever here.

This egg is 10.39 m high and weighs 7,200 kg , but  it is ugly. I like the GUYLIAN GIANT EGG (below) because it looks good and we also know how much sugar is in the egg.

This Giant Egg was made in 2005 in Belgium by chocolate maker Guylian.

Statistics:

Height: 8.32 m  

Weight: 1950 kg chocolate

No. Chocolatiers: 26

No. Chocolate bars: 50,000

Total time: 525 hrs

Easter Challenge for Chocoholics

The amount of sugar in the giant egg weighs as much as a Fiat Punto.

Math Joke 3:How long will it take you to grow a really bad 70s-styles haircut?

The follicle diagram (above) came from bgoffforensics blog. More on hair growth rates here.

QUESTION 1:

How long to grow that really bad 70s style hair cut?

The length of Fabio’s hair (below) is approx 50cm.

t = 50/1.25 months

t=40 months          

t = 3 Years 4 months!!!!

Is it worth the effort? Ha!

QUESTION 2: 

The growth rates of 1.25 cm/month or 0.5 inches/month are rounded off. Calculations using these growth rates will produce different answers for very large numbers (as above). Read more about the above story in the Daily Mail, UK here. By the way, Asha has been growing her hair for 25 years. Her hair weighs 3 stone or 19 kg. You can find more hair records including the World’s longest ear hair here.

QUESTION 3:

Natasha lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Read more about Natasha in the Daily Mail here. Once again Mathspig has rounded off the length of hair for easy calculation. The Daily Mail puts Natasha’s ‘mane’ at 5 feet 2 inches or 157 cm. This is the length of hair to be cut off. So Mathspig adjusted the length to 180cm or the approx length of her longest hair.

MATH JOKE 9: Seriously Funny

4. If you are involved in a car chase, hijacking, explosion, volcanic eruption or alien invasion, you will not go into shock.

Here are just a few of the popular disaster movies:
Avalanche (2001), Earthquake (1974), Armageddon (Involves meteors 1998), Deep Impact (More meteors 1998), 2012 (Tsunamis, earthquakes, the lot. 2009), Twister (tornadoes 1996), Backdraft (Fire. 1991) and Towering Inferno (They don’t make thunderous movie titles like that anymore. (1974)  

But what percentage of people involved in, say, an explosion suffer from SHOCK! There are many statistics about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) available. In one excellent study in The National Centre for PTSD Journal involved an explosion in a paint factory in Norway (1976), the 246 employees were ranked for their exposure to shock as follows:.

A. 66 Narrow escape

B. 59 Involved but not in danger

C. 121 Not present on the day.

 80% Group A suffered shock and PTSD. Both Groups A & B showed symptoms of PTSD 7 months later. If, say, a plane crashed into your school sports field and your class survived with minor injuries calculate  how many students in your maths class would go into SHOCK and how many would be left to take action using the above statistics.

These stats can also be used as a fraction or decimal exercise using 0.8 or 4/5 as the fraction of students in shock.

More information at the Health Dept WA

NOTE: Many schools in Australia today not only practise fire drills but terrorist attack lockdowns.