Proportion – Jon Oaks

14 May

Thought-Provoking Proportion Challenge Problems

By Jon OaksUncategorizedActivity, Application, Capture Recapture, Proportion, Worksheets

I totally meant to share these problems a few weeks ago, but I wanted to try it out with my classes first. However, I got so distracted with doing my Capture & Recapture Lab that we never got to the worksheet. Yes, I did a Capture & Recapture lab for my Beginning Algebra Classes to help demonstrate how proportions might be used as part of a method of estimation. Several students told me that without the lab, they wouldn't have really understood exactly why we even needed proportions. That made me happy. So, here we are after the semester has…

10 Mar

Games, Activities, and Useful Web Tools.

By Jon OaksUncategorizedActivity, Cell Phone, Desktop Sharing, Equations, Finance, Games, History, I Have Who Has, Integers, Links, Measurement, Proportion, QR Codes, Ratio, Video, Wolfram|Alpha, Worksheets

Here's a rundown of some of the games and activities that I've recently used in the classroom, along with various other useful links that I can see being applicable to learning and education. 1. Ed On Your Own Crossword Puzzles - This particular link from Ed on Your Own has a list of free printable math crossword puzzles for the classroom. Recently I used the One Step Equation Crossword Puzzle and the Two Step Equation Crossword Puzzle with my students. Even the students who were not doing so well with solving equations seem to be doing significantly better after doing these…

03 Mar

The Snooze Button is Now a Math Problem

By Jon OaksUncategorizedApplication, Proportion, Ratio

Yesterday I came across this problem while planning a lesson on ratio and proportion:"When I woke up this morning, I hit the snooze button and got 10 extra minutes to sleep. Every time I hit the button, I get 10 extra minutes. At this rate, if my alarm first goes off at 5:30 and I hit the snooze button 4 times before I actually get up, what time do I get up?" After careful thinking, it turns out that I wasn't actually interested in this problem at all. I was actually interested in asking questions such as:Does it make since…

03 Mar

Rotten Tomatoes, Linear Equations, Ratio and Proportion

By Jon OaksUncategorizedApplication, Equations, Money, Proportion, Ratio

This problem came about because I was talking about solving the equation 4x + y = - 14 for y and there was a little confusion about how I could subtract 4x from - 14. Although this was really a problem with combining like terms, I figured that now was as good of a time as ever to reinforce the idea of combining like terms. "Yaletta bought an unknown number of tomatoes at $4 each, but when she got home, she found out that all of the tomatoes were rotten. In addition, she checked her receipt and realized that the…