Cups and All About Me!

Wow!  What an awesome first few days we had!  I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know all the students through their "Me Circle Maps" and hearing about their likes and dislikes.  I can't believe some of them don't like chocolate!

We also did a great activity with styrofoam cups.  Our objective was to find out "how many styrofoam cups stacked will it take to reach the top of Mrs. Adams' head".  To trick the students, I measured in centimeters, otherwise it would have been too easy.  We found out it took about 86 cups.  I was amazed to see the thinking process from all of the students and was quite impressed!  We used a circle map to help organize our thoughts and solving process and the students went right to work.

 Do you want the cups stacked this way?

Let's see the height of two cups stacked together.

A circle map to organize the process.

"See how the cup as a top part or rim?"

So Mrs. Adams didn't buy enough cups so we are adjusting to determine if it really takes 86 cups.

Thanks for a wonderful start to the year!

Welcome!

Welcome to Mrs. Adams' 8th grade math class!  I am so very excited about the school year and I hope you are too!  This summer I went to a fabulous math conference and got many great ideas that I plan on trying this year.  One of the ideas was to start a blog so that students and parents could both feel more a part of the class.  My goal is to share activities that we do in class, post pictures of us doing those activities, and maybe share some fun math stuff you might be interested in.  This is a work in progress, but I hope you will enjoy it!

Unfortunately in math we are always crunching numbers and we rarely get to talk personal, so I'm hoping this blog will also help me and my students get to know each other better and share things we don't get to share in class.  Therefore, I will start us off!  The top ten things you might want to know about me:
1)  My family is the most important thing in my life!  I have 2 precious daughters and a wonderful husband, not to mention a huge extended family that I think the world of!

2)  My favorite color is pink, pink, pink!
3)  I am the middle child inbetween 2 super brothers that I love to pieces!
4)  I am part Italian and my Italian family makes homemade sausage during the holidays with an old-fashion sausage maker.
5)  I love to cook...when I have time.
6)  The beach is my favorite vacation spot.
7)  I love to volunteer at my daughter's school and am very involved in the PTA there.
8)  I love sports!
9)  The Horned Frogs are my HOME TEAM!  Go FROGS!
10)  I love to read!  If I get a good book I am likely to read it in 24 hours because I can't put it down.

There you go!  Some fun fast facts about me.  I'm looking forward to a great year!