Watch these two videos and tell me which you think explains Pythagorean theorem better and why in a comment. This should include evaluation of EACH video.

Video # 1: Darth Vader Explains Pythagorean Theorem

Video # 2: Eggman Uses Pythagorean Theorem

I am finding myself immersed in planning for our 8th grade students to attend New Trier High School. I returned their completed placement tests to New Trier and I am scheduling and attending multiple meetings in preparation for articulations (the Marie Murphy-New Trier transition meetings). It’s surprising how early this preparation starts. Students experience this, too. They are receiving frequent communication from the high school and are being asked to complete many forms.

All this attention to the future must make it challenging for students to stay in the moment. But there is so much left to do in eighth grade! The best advice I can give is STAY FOCUSED! Whether you plan to attend New Trier or will be going to a different high school, there is a lot of learning left to do right here.

A strong end to middle school is your best investment in a great beginning to high school.

Wednesday through Friday of last week, the eighth graders were treated to a number of field trips. One group of students was in Washington, D.C. touring the monuments, capitol buildings, and museums. Another group of students in Chicago visited the Holocaust Memorial Foundation in Skokie and went on an architectural tour of downtown Chicago. The Chicago group also watched a movie about the conflicts in the Middle East, and performed a dramatic reading of a poem inspired by the movie. You can see a movie of their performance on Mrs. Roche’s blog.

Students: In a comment below, tell us about one place you visited last week that you really enjoyed or found interesting or important. Describe the location, what you saw there and what it meant to you.

On Thursday, my first period class had a special guest visit us via Sypke, the online telephone-video service. Ira David Socol, currently a doctoral candidate at Michigan State University, is the author of two works of fiction, A Certain Place of Dreams and The Drool Room. He told the students about growing up moving back and forth between New York City and Northern Ireland as a child. Dysgraphic, dyslexic and ADHD, he found school to be difficult, frustrating and inflexible, particularly in the United Stated in the early days of special education. But he never gave up. He figured out ways to work around his disabilities and work with his strengths. As new technologies emerged, he found tools that would allow him access the written word and to communicate in writing with others. His current research is on designing educational experiences that work for all students and finding tools that benefit all learners.

Mr. Socol made a point of telling the students he would NOT tell them to try harder. Rather, he encouraged them to explore their interests, find ways of learning that work for them and to find tools and technologies that will allow them to show their brilliance. The class was inspired by Mr. Socol’s honest, matter-of-fact answers to their questions and his openness about his disabilities. They have already asked to have him back later in the year.

Thank you, Mr. Socol!

Click here to see pictures of Mr. Socol “skyping” in to the class. (You’ll have to scroll down to see the pictures.)

Yesterday Mr. Bryden, our head custodian, came into my first period math class with a real problem. He had a bag of fertilizer and he was looking out the window at the peace garden planted in the lawn below. He was trying to determine how many bags of fertilizer he would need to fertilize the garden three times a year. Now, a peace garden is, of course, a circle (and we know how to calculate the area of a circle), but this circle has walkways cut out of the middle of it in the shape of a peace sign. Upon further inspection, we also discovered that there is a ring (think circumference) of shrubs around the outside, and the instructions on the fertilizer bags said to handle fertilizing those differently.

Well, we ARE a math class and we just happen to be in a geometry unit currently studying area and circumference of circles, so perhaps we can help Mr. Bryden out. We will be spending the next few days planning out how to solve this interesting real-world math problem and then actually solving it.

After a few days of adjusting to new teachers and new routines, 8th Grade is off and running. The “newness” is not just something the students are experiencing. I have a new Promethean board in my classroom (way cool!), a new class (Resource Math), a new curriculum in Foundations in Algebra 2 (which means a great new textbook and upgraded software to accompany it), a new electronic grade book, and a fancy new calculator that operates more like a computer than a calculator. After 13 years at Marie Murphy, I feel a bit like a new teacher again. Which is to say I have a lot to learn.

But, you know what? That’s okay. It’s good to be a learner. It reminds me of how much I enjoy learning new things. And it reminds me that while learning can be fun, it can also be challenging, difficult, and frustrating. When learning isn’t easy and I have to struggle to learn something new, I find myself looking for the strategies I need to insure my success. That’s something I can teach and model for my students.

Educational technology guru Will Richardson likes to say that his job title is “Learner-in-Chief.” There is no doubt that I will be learner-in-chief in my classes this year.

I am looking forward to meeting all of my new students! This is always an exciting (and sometimes a touch stressful) time of year. We’ll get back into the routine quickly. Let’s have a great year together.

I usually reserve this space for posts of interest to my students and their parents. This post, however, is primarily for my teaching colleagues, although there is probably something for everyone here.

I attended the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Washington, D.C. this summer, and it was great to have some focused time to reflect on my teaching practices. It’s interesting to me that some of the real gems I took from the conference had more to do with learning and teaching than technology. But I’ll save those for another time, because, after all, NECC is a tech conference.

So here are ten tech treats from NECC 2009 (and who shared them and their Twitter name, where applicable):

1.    http://udltechtoolkit.wikispaces.com/About+UDL – Universal design for learning – think curb cuts for the classroom! EVERY teacher needs to think about how these accommodations could benefit many students (not just students with special needs). (via @KarenJan aka Karen Janowski)

2.    http://www.techmatrix.org/ – analyzes tech tools for reading, writing and math for various special needs. Think UDL – perhaps you’ll find something that will benefit many students – not just students with IEPs.

3.    http://www.readwritethink.org/ is a website developed by the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association. Links for the National Day on Writing October 20th, 2009.

4.    http://www.mathtrain.tv/ – Videos by middle school students, for middle school students, teaching various math concepts. Great place for students to get a genuine audience while teaching and learning math. (from Ihor Charischak)

5.    http://www.findsounds.com/ This search engines finds sounds on the internet that can be embedded into presentations, used as writing prompts, or…use your imagination! (I’ll take wagers on what middle school boys will search for first – and yes, they are there.) (via @attipscast aka Chris Bugaj)

6.   Science Leadership Academy. This is not just for science teachers. The SLA is an inquiry-driven, project-based high school in Philadelphia focused on 21st century learning. I heard the principal, Chris Lehmann, speak on Progressive Pedagogy and 21st Century Skills and was impressed with their approach and their results. In this link, you will find a his presentation slides and links to SLA’s project planning worksheets which are first rate.

7. http://taggalaxy.de/ – Tag Galaxy grabs pictures from Flickr that have been tagged with a certain label and organizes them according to their related tags. I can see uses for teaching everything from vocabulary to verbal reasoning and beyond.

8.    http://vozme.com/index.php?lang=en Cut and paste any text and it will read it to a student; Students can install a bookmarklet in their browser to have any thing on the web read to them. (via @LParisi and @CSouthard)

9.    http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Audacity is free, downloadable sound editor. It gives you a visual of what you sound like so you can edit out pauses, ums, stutters, etc. This would be a great tool to help students practice speaking fluently for class presentations. (via @CSouthard and @LParisi)

10.    http://www.mathplayground.com/ Fun, interactive games for reinforcing math skills. Students love it. (via @CSouthard and @LParisi)

And if that wasn’t enough or you didn’t find something you can use or you just want more: Top 10 free Web 2.0 Tools Session by Steve Dembo http://prezi.com/117545/.

Remember when you were little and you had a favorite picture book that you asked everyone – mom, dad, grandparents – to read to you? How many times was that book read to you? I bet I have read To Kill a Mockingbird that many times.

I began to re-read TKAM again last week, and as always, I felt like I was welcoming an old friend back into my life. I know this book so well, and yet it gives me something new every time I read it. Students’ insights into the book also give me a fresh perspective on the book each year. (See the Student Zone of our Mind Candy student blog for their thinking about TKAM.)

Yet there are questions I ask every time I read it that I never quite get answered: What are “Big Mules,” who was “Lorenzo Dow,” and is the Gray Ghost a real book or something that sounds real that Harper Lee made up? No matter. These details add resonance to the story but you don’t need to know all the answers to follow the plot.

Are there stories you like to re-read? Why do we enjoy reading things over and over? Have you ever re-read something and not enjoyed it as much as you recalled? I’d love to hear about your experiences with re-reading.

New research shows that even baby chicks can do math. No more excuses, students! If they can do it, so can you! Click HERE to read the article and see chicks doing math.