High school math teacher desktop toys
Ranna suggested, “We could count how many times you breathe. The students talked together and raised their hands excitedly to report on their ideas.Ĭameron said, “We think we could count how many times someone blinks their eyes in a minute and figure it out for three minutes or three hours.” “Together, see if you can come up with something you could count in the room that would help you make a prediction about that same event in the future.” I suggested that they talk to someone sitting near them about their ideas. “If you wanted to make a prediction about things that take three minutes or three hours, what is something you could easily count without leaving this room?” I asked. I then presented the problem I wanted the students to solve. There is more to this book than could possibly be read in one sitting, so I read just enough to give the students the flavor of each section. The children agreed that the predictions must be estimates, and I moved on to read the next page, which is about what will happen in the next three minutes. “Do you think the author’s predictions are meant to be exact or estimates?” I asked. “The facts in this book are worked out from this great new wealth of information,” I explained. I turned back and read the introduction, which explains the role of counting throughout history, from caterers counting for imperial banquets in ancient China to the sophisticated counting we do today with computers. “No,” Burton said, “who could count all the trees being cut down all over the world at exactly the same three seconds? The author must be guessing.” “Do you think people really cut down exactly ninety-three trees every three seconds?” I asked.
“They don’t cut down trees at night,” Rick countered.Ĭameron disagreed, saying, “It isn’t night on the other side of the world and they could be cutting the trees down there.” I thought this might be a good time to talk about how the author had made his predictions. “Every three seconds they cut down that many trees?” Olivia asked. The students were interested to learn that “ninety-three trees will be cut down to make the liners for disposable diapers.” We learned that in the next three seconds, Russians will mail more than four thousand letters or parcels and that Americans will buy fifty-six air-conditioning units. On the first two-page spread, I read almost all the entries for what could happen in the next three seconds. Each two-page spread after the introduction covers a specific period of time, but always in increments of three: three seconds, three minutes, three hours, three days, three nights, three weeks, three months, three years, three decades, three centuries, three thousand years, and three million years. When I opened the book, I purposely skipped the introduction, which gives directions for making your own predictions. I read a few more entries from the book’s cover to give the class a taste of what the book is like. I read, “In the next three seconds, Italians will drink a stack of cases of mineral water as high as the Statue of Liberty.” “Read us the one about the Statue of Liberty,” Roxanne asked. The students squinted to read the small print surrounding the Statue of Liberty. Inside the circle are illustrations and words radiating from a central picture of the Statue of Liberty. The cover shows a large circle, which on careful inspection you can see is the outline of a pocket watch.
I held the book so the students could see the cover as they came and sat down in the meeting area. This lesson appears in the new book Math and Nonfiction, Grades 3–5, by Stephanie Sheffield and Kathleen Gallagher. Here, fifth graders explore just one of the predictions made in the book and use estimation, multiplication, and division to make a prediction of their own.
all the way up to the next three million years. Predictions for the Millennium (New York: Puffin, 1997) is a collection of predictions about everyday and not-so-everyday events that will take place in the next three seconds, the next three minutes, the next three hours, days, weeks. Rowland Morgan’s In the Next Three Seconds.