节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2013-04-15
难易度:Medium
关键字:devote, application, burn off, inspire, open-ended, multimedia, Common
Core State Standard
Hello, and welcome to Studio Classroom.
My name is Gabe.
And I'm Carolyn.
And thank you for joining us for our lesson "Mathalicious!" All right.
We're going to be talking about math and how it can be made fun.
It can be an interesting subject.
Why do I say that?
Because many people think that math is not interesting.
Well, what about you?
Do you think math is interesting or not, and why? Carolyn?
Well, I do think math is very interesting.
It wasn't a subject that I was always very good at, but I really enjoyed it.
And I actually took advanced math classes in high school when I could have taken
something else.
Wow! That is really good because I did not take any advanced math classes.
I enjoyed some of my math classes.
I, too, thought they were interesting even though I wasn't very good at math.
I'm not good with numbers or doing math problems, but I did find the problems
kind of interesting.
However, I know that many people have different thoughts about math.
Let's get started with the first reading of today's lesson - Mathalicious!
(Music).
Mathalicious!
Getting students interested in math by asking better questions.
Former middle school math teacher Karim Kai Ani often faced a classroom full of
bored students.
But he couldn't get upset because he agreed with them - the lessons really were
boring!
That's why he became a math coach, a job that allowed him to help other teachers
design better lessons.
Then, in 2009, he founded the math-teaching website Mathalicious, so he could
devote himself completely to designing lessons.
Unlike lessons in traditional math textbooks, Mathalicious lessons ask
open-ended math questions with real-life applications.
(Music).
Great! Well, let's get started with "Mathalicious!" Uh, there's something kind
of special about that title.
Carolyn, what does this word mean?
Is this even a real word?
Well, it is a made-up word.
It is not something you would find in the dictionary.
But it takes the word "math" and the word "delicious," so something that you
really enjoy, and puts the two words together.
So it is "mathalicious." It is very fun math.
All right.
Well, maybe you can think about combining other words with the word "delicious,"
something that you don't normally enjoy,
and then adding "alicious," it might make it easier to enjoy.
Well, let's get started.
The first thing we read here is getting students interested in math by asking
better questions.
And that's true.
Sometimes you might get someone interested in something by asking good questions
about it.
That's right.
If you make interesting questions, then the topic will also be more interesting.
And we see: Former middle school math teacher Karim Kai Ani often faced a
classroom full of bored students.
So here is a math teacher at a junior high school, and his students are very
bored.
That's right.
It seems like he's facing a challenge here.
We continue: But he couldn't get upset because he agreed with them - the lessons
really were boring!
But wait!
He's a math teacher, and he thinks the lessons are boring?
Yeah. It seems like even the teacher thought that the lessons were boring, so he
couldn't be upset with the students.
Now I think Steve and Ken have some information they'd like to share with us in
the Info Cloud about this word - boring.
You might get a little bored when you hear what we're about to say, but I think
it's important to know the difference between bored and boring.
I hope nobody is feeling bored right now because today's lesson is not boring at
all.
No, it's not.
OK. "Bored" should be used when describing how a person feels, as in: I'm bored
or she feels bored.
Boring, however, is used to describe things other than people.
For example, that movie was boring or that book is really boring.
Now if you say "I'm boring," then you're saying you're a boring person.
You make others bored.
This is the same with excited and exciting.
Sometimes I hear English learners say: That made me very exciting or I feel
exciting.
Remember, adjectives with the "I-N-G" suffix should be reserved to describe
things, not people.
So I guess we can say if it ends with "I-N-G," then use it to describe things,
not people.
That's a great rule, Ken.
Hey, that was an interesting lesson.
And I hope nobody felt bored.
(Chinese).
Thank you, gentlemen.
That was interesting information, not boring at all.
Well, we continue learning about Karim Kai Ani.
He thought that some lessons were boring in math.
So we continue.
That's why he became a math coach, a job that allowed him to help other teachers
design better lessons.
Let's talk about the difference there between a coach and a teacher.
What do you know about this, Carolyn?
Well, a coach is someone who leads a team.
And a teacher is someone who teaches in a classroom.
So it sounds like his job has changed a little bit.
Instead of teaching students, he is helping teachers to become better math
teachers and coaching them,
or giving them advice on how to make their lessons more interesting.
That's right.
He's a great guy.
"Then, in 2009," as we continue, "he founded the math-teaching website
Mathalicious, so he could devote himself completely to designing lessons." OK.
So it seems like his career completely changed.
He was a teacher.
Now he is a coach and he designs lessons.
That's right.
And in this sentence we see the key word "devote." If you devote your life to
something, then you give your life to it.
That is where you spend all of your time.
OK. Maybe you don't want to devote your life to something, but maybe you can
devote your time to something a little smaller like:
This weekend I need to devote a couple of hours to finishing my homework, my
math homework.
I need to devote some time to my math homework.
Or you should devote some time to studying English.
You should practice at least ten minutes a day to keep your English skills up to
par, to keep them sharp.
Good idea.
Well, we continue.
Unlike lessons in traditional math textbooks, Mathalicious lessons ask
open-ended math questions with real-life applications.
There's a lot in that sentence.
Let's talk about open-ended questions.
What are those?
Well, if something is open-ended, then it doesn't have a right or wrong answer.
It's something that you need to really think about.
What might the answer be?
Maybe do some research to figure out what the question is really trying to get
to.
That's right.
I also think maybe the answer is not simply a yes or a no.
Maybe an open-ended question will start with... with the word "how" or "why."
Well, we have a key word right there.
It is "application." Let's take a look at that.
An application is something that can apply to your life, how you use something.
Right. So a real-life application is something that you can use every day, not
just once in a while.
And it's really great because a lot of people wonder: Oh, well math, how am I
going to use this later in my life?
So if you have real-life applications for open-ended math questions, math is
suddenly a very interesting subject if you thought it was boring before.
Mmhm. And there are many ways math can be applied to lots of careers.
Well, right now it's time for us to watch a special video about Mathalicious.
And then we'll go and join Michelle in the Language Lab.
According to a Raytheon study, 61 percent of middle school students say they
would rather take out the garbage than do their math homework.
For them, math isn't just a chore, it's worse.
If you ask students why they dislike math so much, they'll say I don't know what
it means and when I'll ever use it.
Mathalicious is rewriting math around real-world topics.
We provide classroom teachers with lessons that allow them to teach
standards-based math using real-world topics that students care about,
from the NBA to the iPad, to the odds of finding life on other plants.
Instead of teaching fractions and percents, teachers get to teach: Is Wheel of
Fortune rigged?
Instead of just proportions, they're asking: Do people of small feet pay too
much for shoes? And should Nike charge by weight?
Exponential decay?
How is the iPod depreciated over time?
When teachers teach using Mathalicious lessons, not only are they teaching more
standards in less time,
but they're doing it in a way that allows them to have the kinds of
conversations with their students that they got into teaching to have in the
first place.
I was a middle school math teacher for a number of years and really struggled.
Teaching is hard.
I realize that many of the challenges that we teachers face, from classroom
management to disengaged students,
stem directly back to the content that we're teaching.
It's dry.
It's irrelevant.
It's boring to students.
And it doesn't need to be like that.
I started Mathalicious to give teachers an alternative.
On a recent survey, 95 percent of teachers said their students enjoy
Mathalicious lessons.
You couldn't get 95 percent of teachers to say that their students enjoy lunch.
And even more importantly, 97 percent said it makes their students better
problem-solvers.
And 71 percent of teachers said they enjoy their jobs more when they teach
Mathalicious lessons.
Happier teachers, smarter students.
As a former classroom teacher myself, I know how hard teachers work and how busy
they are.
At Mathalicious, we provide them with everything they'll need to teach the
lesson effectively:
form a student handout to a multimedia presentation with the audio and the
video,
to a lesson guide that highlights typical misconceptions and how they can
address them.
We put teachers in a position to engage their students with conversations that
are really interesting and teach math at the same time.
When teachers use Mathalicious lessons, students don't feel like they're just
learning math but they're using math to learn about the world.
Because at the end of the day, math is not a set of skills to learn, memorize
and regurgitate.
Mathematics is a tool that we humans developed to explore the world around us.
And that's what Mathalicious does.
(Music).