Henna Designs Fall 2014

Students recently completed their Henna designs based on guidance from myself and our guest speaker, Rocky Mountain Henna Designs owner Carla Remillard.  The designs were personalized and required students to describe how they used transformations in their creations.

Let's design our own henna!

Community member and owner of Rocky Mountain Henna, Carla Remillard, spent a few days with students in my Math Literacy class.  Ms. Carla spent the first day educating students on the ingredients of henna and the dangers of using black henna.  The second day Ms. Carla showcased Moroccan designs and their connection to transformations in math.  Students had the rest of class to apply henna (with prior permission from parents/guardians, of course!) based on designs  inspired by geometric designs are personal interests.

Guest Speaker - Sean Starkey

Challenger parent, Sean Starkey, visited with students in my Math Literacy class to discuss the challenges and benefits of being an engineer.  He shared about his current work in telecommunications, coding, and sound frequency and played with sound quality using Audacity. 

Party Spock is in the House, Everybody Have a Logical Time!

As my Geometry students continue their journey through the land of proofs, I challenged students to create their own examples and student-friendly reasoning for the following conjecture:

Two students took the opportunity to prove the conjecture using algebra:

Using Tables to Prove Conjectures

Geometry students were thrown for a bit of a loop when having to describe the conjecture in this pattern.  As soon as I suggested using a table several light bulbs went off!  Those are my FAVORITE moments as a teacher!

Original question on the homework

Student response

I am continually impressed with the pride and respect students have for supporting their classmates with sharing ideas at the board!  This student helped many of her classmates with realizing the simplicity of this problem by using a table as a tool for learning :-)

Guest Speaker - Bonnie Birckenstaedt

Bonnie sharing talking about her role at ULA

A good friend of mine from my days at Colorado School of Mines came to speak with my Math Literacy kiddos on Friday, October 3.  Bonnie is a Radio Frequency Engineer at United Launch Alliance (ULA).  She was able to share her challenges, passions, and accomplishments with my students to inspire them to become engineers and pursue space exploration.

Bonnie pointed out all of the math she uses on a daily basis to solve complex problems - her favorite being Calculus :-P

Click HERE to see her presentation.