Outnumbered January 5, 2012
Posted by mareserinitatis in gifted, math, teaching, younger son.Tags: math, teaching, younger son
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Today I’m going to be working with the elementary students again. This will be interesting as I completely switched gears from what we were doing before. The stuff we were doing before was fun, but as we move through the book, it looks like they need a lot of multiplication and division…which most second graders don’t have.
Today, we’re going to learn about other number systems. In particular, I’m going to have them pick a number using Indo-Arabic numerals and ‘translate’ into other numbering systems – Egyptian, Roman, Babylonian, Mayan, and Chinese. This will give us an opportunity to talk about different bases, positional numbers (i.e. the concept of place value), and how many systems don’t have a zero. (Although, there’s debate in some cases.)
After doing the prep, I’m SO glad that we don’t use the Babylonian system. Base 60?! No wonder my math professor got annoyed when we used degrees.
Thanks to the MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive for the picture!
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[...] help out with advanced math concepts in an elementary school classroom. This week she’s using other numbering systems to teach the kids about different bases. Of course I’m impressed second graders are getting exposed to this but I think it’s [...]