Shuffleboard Becomes a Math Warm Up {Math Monday}

I love discovering #mathinmyworld opportunities to share with our students and I've let this idea get put on the back burner for a bit of time.  While playing several games of shuffleboard and doing lots of mental math as the score keeper I decided I not only had an example of math in my world - I had a math warm up activity.  Today I shared what shuffleboard was, showed a picture of the court, explained how to play and got really excited about the force  and motion involved, and then I explained the scoring.  I gave the students partners to work with and asked them to figure out how many points were scored each round or turn.  I saw some puzzled looks and modeled the first two rounds with a table to help keep track of my thinking.  The room became a gentle buzz with productive math talk.  Definitely an idea to play around with more - maybe there's a new math warm up routine here.  It's easy to see writing and reading in our world - let's find, share, and discuss math in our world that's relevant and applicable for our students to wrap ideas around.

#mathinmyworld example

                                                   

Here is some summer goodness from my garden.  I love opening up the pea pod and counting how many peas are inside in all.  I counted 6.  My brain instantly thought of 3 plus 3 but I didn't see that in my pea pod.  Then I thought of 3 groups of 2, but I didn't see that either.  What I saw was a different combination for 6. 

                                           

This was a brief moment of math in my world.  It was a great moment to think of quantity and number combinations.  It also showed some fact fluency and flexibility.  I think the first photo will make a great math warm up discussion.  I can't wait to see what my students see and think about.  Maybe we will each have to open up our own pea pod and do a sketch about what we see in math.

I hope you will consider joining the fun by either sharing a photo via twitter or instagram using the hashtag #mathinmyworld

#mathinmyworld

                                                    

Math is all around us.  If we take the time to notice and wonder, we can see mathematics.  While walking today in German Village I noticed geometry, rectangles to be specific.  After viewing this picture here, I also see a discussion about angles and another about fractions.

                                                

There are stories within math.  We can take a picture of things and tell number stories about what we see.  In the simplest form of number sense the story at lunch today was we got 3 soft pretzel sticks.  I wish I had taken a picture of one half eaten because then the story would be more involved with a story about fractions.

I think it's easy to share and show children how important reading and writing are.  I think reading and writing is easier to talk about as adults.  Readers have a common language.  Writers use language to convey ideas.  How do we share math?  How do we show reasons for learning math?  How do we apply math outside the classroom?  Can we be math mentors and models to our students?  If you've read Math Exchanges by Kassia Omohundro Wedekind then the notion of sharing math in our world will not be new to you.  

I've decided to start collecting pictures for math in my world to share with my students this upcoming school year.  I've dabbled a bit in using instagram and just decided to make my account public.  One of my plans for instagram is to collect and house my math in my world photos.  I've created the hashtag #mathinmyworld in hopes I can pull those photos up within my collection and I'm hoping others will join in on the fun.  If you don't have an instagram account you can still join in on the fun via twitter with the same hashtag.  I plan on sharing my new pictures there too.  

Get your camera ready and join the #mathinmyworld fun!