Do you know where 2/11 is on a blank circle?

I've been going through the gem list from resourceaholic. I found it about a month ago, bookmarked it, created a checklist in Trello to keep track of my progress, and have been slowly working my way through all 40-something lists. There are so many great ideas, links, and other people to follow embedded in these short, 5-item posts. When I finish up a big project or need a brain break or just need to be inspired, I open up the next one and explore a little. 

Today, I got to Gem #15. 

The first item is this cute little fraction applet, called Slice the Pie. 
To play the game, you hover over a circle, and click where you want the shaded part of the circle to stop. (So you could shade a tiny slice, or a giant slice)

The object of the game is to shade the amount of the pie indicated by the fraction shown. However, there aren't any partitions shown (just a blank circle). You have to use your own number sense to get as close as you can. Do you know where 2/11 is on a blank circle? 1/12? 23/30?

I love the estimation skills, the number sense, & how relative number sizes are all a part of this easy, quick, little game. I can even see using something like this when starting the unit circle. (Can you shade for pi radians? pi/4 radians?)

My first try, I scored a 49. Can you beat that?

Skitch Connect Four/Tic Tac Toe with Circle Terms

Hi everyone!

I thought it'd be best to start the first of May off with a blog post left over from April.

We've been starting some geometry lately, and my Math 3 kids really needed a few days to get their brains wrapped around the vocabulary.

I found a neat Circles Tic Tac Toe activity and this blog post including paper folding notes, which helped me plan my instruction for my kiddos.

I've really been trying to put my 10 class iPads to use with partner activities, and this fit the bill perfectly. My class is one of the pilot BYOD rooms in the school, but there's still many of my students that don't have a device to bring. Often, lessons where they can work in pairs instead 1:1 with the tech are much more doable. Here's what we did.

Setting up an ISN page that's got several pieces can seriously EAT class time. So I replaced their usual warmup activity with some simple instructions. I had the first 3 people in the room pass out the strips of paper, which were 1/3 each of a colorful letter sized paper.

We worked together to fill out the index cards, talking about what they knew, and the importance of certain distinctions (line vs. line segment, etc).

We also separated their cards into three groups (the idea I got from the post linked above). 

We practiced using some task cards and a game of Scoot. 

Then students were sorted into pairs, and each pair needed 1 device. 

I posted the picture file in Google Classroom, and they opened it using Skitch. 

(If you don't have devices, you can also print & copy one per pair, or laminate and reuse with dry erase markers.) The Slides file with the instructions and complete list of vocab is here. 

The picture file that my students used looked like this:

They used the Skitch app to draw their X's and O's on the board. 

Below is what the board looked like after one pair finished a game. 

The tech allowed us to save some paper, play multiple times, save the results, and have a bit of fun!

My students enjoyed the activity, and I appreciated the 5 minutes that it took to create this activity. I'll definitely be using Skitch for ed games again soon!