Today, I showed the students how to make a magic science square. I use this activity to combine math and science. Watch the video to see how to make your own science square.
Posted by Mr. Smith at 7:00 PM
1/6/2010
Next Practice
Welcome back team to a new and exciting year. Our next practice will be after school this Thrusday 1/6/10 in my classroom until 4:30 pm. Make sure you take the bus or have a ride home.
Our class practice went well on Thursday and the team is learning different mathematics such as counting, a little number theory, and general word problems.
Our next practice will be online at the Wiziq classroom on Sunday evening at 6:30 pm. All team members, make sure you have signed up and read the files on how to use the tools in the classroom. If you don't have a headset to use, try turning the volume of you computer speakers down to avoid any feedback. Enjoy you weekend. See you Sunday night. Mr. Smith
Update on 12-8-09: Next practice on Thursday, Dec 10th, in my classroom until 4:30 pm.
Hello team members, hope you are enjoying your time off. While you are home, I hope you give some time to the MathCounts material I gave you at our last practice. If you don't have the first sheet of primes and fractions, I'll put a link here soon.
As I mentioned to all (most) of you, we will be having some of our practices at my online classroom at Wiziq.com. Before we begin, you should do the following:
1) Go to www.wiziq.com and sign up for a free account.
2) Read the documatation about the features the classroom provides. I think there is a video or flash tutorial on how the classroom works and the math tools available in the upper right corner. Click on Wiziq Tour and read the information.
3) Come back to this MathCounts Blog and check for updated information about our first online meeting and future practices.
4) If would be helpful to have a headset with microphone to limit feedback.
5) I will call your home and speak to mom or dad and ask for an email so I can invite you into the classroom. We will have our first online practice either Firday at 5pm, Saturday at 6pm, or Sunday at 7pm. The first practice will be to become familiar with the online classroom and see how everything works.
Check back here for updates. Thanks, Mr. Smith
Update:Friday 11/27 We will meet for practice at Wiziq on Sunday night 11/29 at 7pm and Monday night 11/30 at 7pm. You must plan to attend at least one of these practices. You can attend both. We will learn the basic functions of the online classroom and then do some math problems.
Update 2: I scheduled our first online MathCounts practice for Sunday night at 7pm. If you haven't done so already, you should go to Wiziq.com and read the information about how this site works. I will be sending out invitations to join this session today. There will be a second practice on Monday night at 7pm.
Update 3 : Our first practice went well. A few bugs need to be worked out, though. I found out my internet connection was frozen, that's why the blue screen. Our second practice will be Monday night at 7pm.
The MathCounts team is ready to go. The final team members are :
Krystina
Dillon
Sarah
Nathaniel
Todd
Joey
Karthik
Philip
Congratulations to the team members and for all who trid out the last two weeks. I will be calling home to inform your family and set up out first online practice. More details coming
Review:
During our first practice, we gave the definition of prime numbers. We also listed the prime numbers less than 100 and found that there are 25 prime numbers. You should remember these 25 prime numbers because it will help you later when you need to factor large numbers to find the prime factorization. I will give you a formula next time that will help you to find a large number's prime components. Knowing the 25 primes will help in this task and especially during the count down round of the competition.
Today we had some of the Mathcounts students show off their knowledge of them using the Peg System. This system gives the student the ability to remember large amounts of lists or numbers. This is the kind of background knowledge needed to participate at the state level of competition.
Our final try-out for the team will be Thursday, November 19th. Both the A team and B team will be finalized. Good luck everyone.
