As my spring (creeping into summer) cleaning continues, I have a few more items in desperate need of your ideas. What can I do with...
- ...an air pump and a giant novelty basketball? The huge inflatable hoop that accompanied these items broke last year, so I'm left with this. Together, the set became the basis of my famous basketball review game, which was featured in my book Ten Cheap Lessons. Now it just seems to be a hassle to keep, especially since the clunky pump isn't very useful for anything other than this ball, and the ball won't fit in any reasonable hoop. I'm inclined to donate it to my school for field days and the like.
- ...a set of Matchbox cars? I would like to keep at least one of these as an excellent visual aid for this lesson on scale and measurement, but I'm hoping to think of an additional use for them as well.
- ...empty 3 ring binders? After scanning most of my paper records, I was left with dozens of empty 3 ring binders of all shapes, sizes and colors. I donated most of them to my school, but I still kept a considerable amount. What kind of alternative uses are there for these?
- ...a locking cash box? Okay, I admit I have no idea when or why I bought this. I guess I could lock stuff in it at school, but in my experience, some enterprising young hoodlums would simply steal the entire thing.
5 comments:
The matchbox cars can be used for a distance travelled v. slope of ramp type of experiment. Ramps made of cardboard. They lean on a stack of textbooks. Car is let look, car travels. Measure distance travelled. Change height of book stack. Creates a set of data points to be used in whatever way you need.
I use my matchbox cars when we hit the uniform motion systems of equations. It's easier to make sure kids can read and understand the problem correctly when you have them model it with the cars. "Two cars leave town at the same time, traveling in the same direction" looks different than "One car leaves town at noon and a faster car leaves at 2pm".
I also use the matchbox cars for similar activities, including obtaining data for a scatterplot, then estimating & using regression to find line of best fit. (Also kinda cool to use different cars for systems)
Binders are of course good for the students who don't have their own supplies, but I like to use them as "dividers" so students can take tests or quizzes while desks are set up in groups.
I'll definitely hold on to the Matchbox cars to try out your suggestions. But I'm getting rid of the lockbox. :)
Give the binders to the students to use as portfolios or data notebooks to help them track their own progress in your class.
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