Good Activity for Geometry Students

My geometry students all took the Chapter 6 test yesterday and are about to start learning about geometric transformations in the next chapter. For all of you out there who aren't familiar with the term geometric transformations, I assure you that you probably know exactly what they are! Basically it's reflections of shapes, rotations, and translations (when you just slide something over without changing it). So instead of diving right into the chapter in the book, I decided to do a little activity with them today. I found this lesson plan on PBS, which is the best resource for teachers if you ask me:

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/connect/resources/3945/preview/

The challenge is that given a square split into 8 parts (as seen in that activity), there are 13 unique ways to display 1/2 without simply rotating or reflecting a previous way. The students got 7 minutes to try to come up with all of them in partners of their choosing and then we went one by one in the groups to fill in the boxes online. I was able to get the math department projector for today too so we could all watch as each answer was submitted to see if it was right or wrong.

The cool thing about this lesson was that not only did students get introduced to reflections and rotations (we had a discussion after every rejected answer based on it being a previous box simply flipped or rotated) but they were literally cheering when we got the last one together. It was awesome to see my students that excited about math at 8 a.m.!

All of my little kiddos hard at work!

Busy November

Today is the last day of November already. It seems like just yesterday that I first got here and started teaching; the school year is three whole months under way but it still sort of has that new car smell to it. At home, snow is flying yet here it is still 80 degrees during the day. Thanksgiving came and went, and although I wasn't able to do any Black Friday shopping, I was able to eat turkey and gravy and the works (twice even!). Life in Taiwan seems to be going at warp speed.

Tomorrow is the first day of December and before I blink an eye, I'm sure it will be Christmas break. And judging from how fast fall has gone for me, I think in another few blinks I will find myself in spring and then summer. It all makes me realize how quickly this experience is going to pass me by. It makes me a little sad to think about, but it also makes me excited for the future. Another year (or two???) here, and then who knows...

Thanksgiving in Taiwan

Although this is the first Thanksgiving I have ever spent away from family and loved ones, I think Taiwan did us proud on this one. The school brought in turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing. There was even pumpkin pie for dessert! Even better was the awesome time I got to have with my group of girls that I sit with at every meal, my advisees.

I'm thankful for this amazing life experience and the chance to get to know so many different people from around the world. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Scooter Owner Maria

Well it's official, I own a scooter!

My friend and coworker, Jane, and I struck a deal with a nice Indian man who has lived in Taichung for the past 5 years about buying two scooters he had for sale. This afternoon while I was teaching, Jane had some preps and went to go meet the Indian man and his cousin at the DMV. These scooters are now safely registered under our names, we have paid full in cash, and I even got a name stamp out of the deal!

Let me explain that last part. Everyone (well, almost everyone) in Taiwan (and possibly other Asian countries as well) signs their name with a personalized name stamp. Since each persons name is generally broken down into three chinese characters, they easily fit on a small square stamp that people just carry with them. So apparently this cousin of the Indian man who sold us our scooters is very good friends with some people at the Taichung DMV and while Jane was waiting for the paperwork to process, this cousin went ahead and had them make us our very own name stamps too!

A scooter AND a personalized name stamp?! Thanks Indian man and your cousin.

Common Good Day

At our school, we decided to have a "Common Good Day" this past weekend. Basically, every house (yes, like Harry Potter) chose a charity they wanted to contribute their time to and used the afternoon of Saturday 20, 2010 to do some community service. Archimedes House (my house) decided to first make some cards to send to children at a children's hospital nearby and then use the afternoon to pick up garbage along a trail close to us.

All in all, I would call Common Good Day 2010 fairly successful only because I hadn't been up in the foothills yet on the trails so I thought it was exceptionally beautiful out! We didn't pick up a TON of trash but I figure, any little bit helps, right? :)

Our whole house after the cleanup...notice the very few bags of trash for the large number of people...

View from the top- worth the climb!

My friend and coworker, Jane, and me at the top

Math Olympiad Success

After a whirlwind of 48 hours, jumping between Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, and back again, I can safely say that my first time as a middle school math olympiad coach was a success. It was a very busy schedule and as I type this on Sunday morning after all of the chaos, I'm extremely exhausted. However, I would say that it's all worth it because my kids did awesome, the trip went off without a hitch, and I didn't loose a 7th grader in China!

In all seriousness, I was very proud of my team. I had three little seventh grade girls and one little seventh grade boy with me. Although we had some interesting situations, like making the emergency bathroom stop within an hour of the start of the trip, but I think that's fairly par for the course when traveling with children. In general they were very well behaved and actually really helpful because they could communicate with more people than I could for obvious language reasons. If I couldn't figure something out, I would send one of them to ask someone nearby and they turned out to be awesome little translators.

As far as the math competition went, I was even more proud of my team. My school has been sending a middle school team to this competition for several years now. I've been told that we always do pretty dismal so going into this trip I had very low expectations. As the teams were busy competing on the first floor of the school we were at, the coaches were up on the second floor grading everything and updating the scores. Throughout the competition, which was four rounds, I watched my team start at a tie for fifth place (out of seven teams), move up to fourth, and seal a third place victory with a perfect score in the third round of nineteen multiple choice questions. When the announcer called our name for the third place team from the 7th grade division during the awards ceremony, no one was yelling louder than me because I was so happy for them and it was cute to see their surprised faces (they kept telling me how bad they thought they did!).

All in all, a great but quick trip to China, an awesome math olympiad tournament and my first international travel with preteens under my belt. You can check out some of the pictures I took below.

The team and me outside the school in Shenzhen, China.
7th graders doing what 7th graders do best.
View of the harbor in Shenzhen.

So I'm an Asian Mother for 48 Hours

Currently, I am using the free wi-fi to write this in the Taipei International Airport. It is a Thursday, yes a school day, and I have four 7th graders with me to travel first to Hong Kong and then onto China for a math competition tomorrow. I am officially the ONLY adult responsible for them for 48 hours and it has been...hectic already to say the least.

This morning a van was supposed to pick us up from school to take us to the airport. However, a car showed up and the driver seemed to think he was only supposed to take one person to Taipei. We lost twenty minutes there arguing with him to try to get us there. In the end I was perfectly comfortable riding in the front while the four kids had to cram in the back together. About an hour into our two hour ride, one of the boys told me he had to go to the bathroom. I asked if he could hold it until we got to the airport and he said yes but his face told me no. So we pulled over at a wayside rest and watched him literally sprint to the public toilets. After ten minutes in there he comes out and the first thing he says upon arrival is "Teacher, I thought you said they would have tissue paper here." Sigh, how was I supposed to know that a random wayside rest between Taichung and Taipei wouldn't have toilet paper in the men's room?

Now I'm patiently waiting for the kiddos to return to me at the gate. We are due to depart at 11:25 and I threatened them that if they were not here by 11:00, I would find them and send them back to the school without being able to go to Hong Kong first! I'm hoping that shallow threats will work so we'll see.

Being an Asian mother for these two days will be interesting to say the least. I am looking forward to the stories I will have after this weekend and you should too! (It will probably be an awesome blog post)

Wish me luck!