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HELP! Many of My College Students Don't Know Why We Call Our Number System Base Ten!

Don't you love tests where you ask a question which you believe everyone will get correct, and then find out it just isn't so?  I gave my algebra college students a pretest to see what they knew and didn't know.  One of the first questions was:  Why is our number system called Base Ten?  This is an extremely important concept as it reveals what they know about place value.  Below are some of the answers I received.

1)  It is called Base Ten because we have ten fingers.  (Yikes! If that is so, should we include our toes as well?)

2)  It is called Base Ten because I think you multiply by ten when you move past the decimal sign.  (Well, sort of.  You do multiply by ten when you move to the left of the decimal sign, going from the ones place, to the tens place, to the hundreds place, etc.)

3)  I think it is called Base Ten because it's something we use everyday.  (Really????)

Enough!  It is called Base Ten because we use ten digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9) to write all of the other numbers.  Each digit can have one of ten values: any number from 0 through 9. When the value reaches 9, just before 10, it starts over at zero again.  (Notice the pattern below.)

0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, etc.


In addition, each place is worth ten times more than the last. Ten is worth ten times more than 1, and 1,000 is ten times more than 100. The pattern continues infinitely both ways on a number line.

The decimal point allows for the place value to continue in a consistent pattern with numbers smaller than one. As we move to the right of the decimal point, each place is divided by ten to get to the next place value. One hundredth is one tenth divided by ten, and one thousandth is one hundredth divided by ten. The pattern goes on infinitely.

100's, 10's, 1's . 0.1, 0.01, 0.001, 0.0001, 0.00001, etc.

Since all mathematics is based on patterns, this should not be a new revelation. Perhaps on the post-test, my students will omit the fingers and instead rely on patterns to answer the questions!

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Making Butterflies from Recycled Materials - Earth Day Ideas

When one of my granddaughters was in kindergarten, she came home one day with egg carton caterpillars.  I know most of us have made one of these in our lifetime, but to her, this was the best craft ever!

She told me that her teacher was raising butterflies in her classroom, and soon the butterflies would hatch.  Anticipation and excitement reigned until the day she came out of school telling everyone that one of the butterflies had hatched.  However, much to her chagrin, the teacher was going to let it go.  My granddaughter just couldn't understand why or how her teacher could do that!

But, here is the good part!  She got to make a cocoon out of a toilet paper cylinder.  She covered it by gluing on white cotton balls.  Then she made a butterfly out of tissue paper and a small plastic bag tie.  She put the butterfly inside the cocoon and then pretended to have the butterfly hatch!  This was done over and over and over until the cocoon was no more.  Luckily, I was able to get pictures before both were literally destroyed!

Now, what does all of this have to do with math?  I contemplated all the ways to use recycled products to make items for the classroom.  Thus Trash to Treasure was created. It is full of art ideas, fun and engaging mini-lessons as well as cute and easy-to-construct crafts all made from recycled or common, everyday items.
Find out more than 14 ways to use milk lids for math. Did you know that you can practice math facts using clear plastic containers? Learn how to take two plastic plates and turn them into angle makers. How about using two plastic beverage lids to make card holders for kindergartners or for those whose hands are disabled? Discover ten ways to use carpet squares as well as nine ways to use old calendars. How about playing hop scotch on old carpet squares? Were you aware that butter tubs can become an indoor recess game to practice addition or multiplication facts? These are just a few of the fun and exciting activities that use recycled items found in this resource entitled Trash to Treasure.

Because these numerous activities vary in difficulty and complexity, they are appropriate for any PreK - 4th grade classroom, and the visual and/or kinesthetic learners will love them.

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Techniques for Remembering the Slope for Vertical and Horizontal Lines

I work in the Math Lab at the community college where I also teach. Last week, I had two College Algebra students who were having difficulty with slope.  They knew the equation y = mx + b, but were unsure when it came to horizontal or vertical lines. By the way, they were using their graphing calculators which I made them put away. (The book said no calculators.) I feel that if they construct the lines themselves, it puts a visual image into their brain much better than if the calculator does it for them. Sure enough, one of the sections in their math books gave the picture of the line from which they had to write the equation. They were amazed that I could just look at a graph and know the slope, give the equation, etc. When I taught high school math, my students couldn't use a graphing calculator until the middle of this particular chapter as I wanted them to physically draw the lines.

First, for those who have no idea what I am talking about, slope is rise over run.  Rise is how far a line goes up, and run is how far a line goes along.  At the right, the line goes up 3 and has a run 5; therefore, the slope is 3/5.  Rise/Run (Rise divided by Run) gives us the slope of the line.

When a line is horizontal, it has no rise, only a run. So the numerator would be zero (for no rise) and the denominator would be a number such as 5 for the run.  0 ÷ 5 = 0  This is true for any horizontal line.

A vertical line is different.  It has rise, but no run; therefore there would always be a number in the numerator, but always a zero in the denominator.  Since we cannot divide by zero, the slope is considered undefined. (I do use rise over run stating that a horizontal line might have 0/5 which is equal to 0 and that a vertical line might have 3/0 is undefined because we can't divide by zero. Our college algebra book uses O/K for okay and K/O for knock out which I like, but I still think the students need to know why.)

I wanted these two students to have a picture that would help them remember the difference.  I thought of a table for the horizontal line and asked them what would happen if the legs of the table were uneven.  They agreed that the table would have slope.  Therefore, the table would have a slope of zero if the legs were even.

I then went blank.  In other words, by creative juices stopped working, and I could not think of a picture that would help them visualize undefined. Since Teachers Pay Teachers has a forum,, I asked my fellow math teachers if they had any ideas.  Here is what some of them came up with.

The Enlightened Elephant suggested using a ski slope. She talks about skiing down a "cliff", which would not be possible (although some students try to argue that they could ski down a vertical cliff) and so the slope is "undefined" because it doesn't make sense to ski down a cliff.  Skiing on a horizontal line is possible so it's slope is zero,  She also talks about uphill (positive slope) and downhill (negative slope). 

Math by Lesley Elisabeth tells her students to use "HOY VUX" (rhymes with 'toy bucks')

             Horizontal - Zero (0) slope - y = ?   
             Vertical - Undefined slope - x = ?

All horizontal lines are =7 or = -3 etc., and all vertical lines are =1 or = 6, etc. Students forget this so the acronym HOY VUX helps them to remember. Once they've mastered the slope concept in Algebra I, for the rest of the school year, for Algebra II (especially equations of asymptotes - a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance) and even in calculus classes for tangent lines, HOY VUX is just faster and more practical. 

Animated Algebra created a video lesson on the Slope Intercept.  She has a boy skateboard down a negative slope, literally right on the graph line. Karen then shows the same boy taking an escalator up on a line that has a positive slope. Later in the lesson, she rotates the line clockwise, each movement with a click, to show the corresponding slope number to link the line to the slope.  She includes lots of other visual cues to help students focus on and pay attention to the concepts.