Mr. Higgins’ Blog

Beginning of Day 1 Exploration

From the 2008 Mensa Page-A-Day Calendar

Brad set out in a motorboat at 2PM on Saturday with enough fuel for two days.  He arrived at 2PM on Sunday with an empty tank.  With no supernatural or weather phenomena, what happened?

The scenarios coming from my Algebra I students were comical on several levels.  Some of the responses from the students lacked any sense of basic geography skills which I feel are being stripped away from students.  By the way, I absolutely love geography and maps.  I spent the first five years of my television life watching the weather channel.  I would stay up for hours drawing maps and watching the the weather.

Here is the main response from the student body

The difference in time is because the boat was anchored for basically the entire week and it it took from Saturday ONE WEEK to Sunday of ANOTHER WEEK.

While that scenario is not out the question, I made sure to emphasize that this was the same weekend (implied).

I began discussing the problem by emphasizing time zones and why they exist.  The students bought into the time zone idea; however, they were still not thinking about crossing the international dateline.  Finally, a couple of students were thinking about the dateline and this opened up a can of worms from me because of how dearly I love geography.

I then opened Google Earth and we explored the globe.  It just kills me how little some students know about the globe.  I am not just talking about the names of countries, but information about different regions.

End of Day 1 Exploration

Beginning of Day 2 Exploration

I was so excited to show the students the top of the Stratosphere via Google Earth. 

We then began discussing what time the image was taken.  The conclusion was during the morning hours because of the shadow going TOWARD THE WEST, meaning the sun is TO THE EAST.

I then could not help myself and showed the students the Dole Plantation Maze from the Hawaiian plantation.

I then discussed how to solve mazes in general.  The students had never heard of the "right hand rule", which is just a way of solving a maze that is absent a tricky cycle.  Basically, if you keep your right hand on the wall of a maze, you are guaranteed to be at the finish eventually, granted the maze has meet certain conditions.

End of Day 2 Exploration

Beginning of Day 3 Exploration

I queued up some locations on the globe that I knew were easy to find and had a general idea of their location without using any special markings.  I chose to show the students the following locations:

• Dole Plantation Maze (again)
• Top of the Stratosphere (again)
• World’s Largest Tire
• World’s Largest Hotel
• Tennis Court on top of the World’s Largest Hotel

While I may have not been engaging my students in the math of the situation, I have the right to teach them general life knowledge, which is more than some people can say, when the hallway is their friend between periods.

End of Day 3 Exploration

Beginning of Day 4 of Exploration

The students were taking a quiz, and I provided them several challenging mazes to complete after they were done with the quiz.  I could tell that several of them used the "right hand rule" idea to solve the mazes.

End of Day 4 of Exploration

All of this exploration was over a four day period and I was able to incorporate some time into each day to discuss the topic for at least 10 minutes instead of just giving some time to work on homework in silence.