Howitt’s Math Home

Here are a few images from this years Chinese New Year Celebration.

Today marked a very historic day for the United States. This is the first time that a visible minority has been elected to the seat of President. Barack Obama took the oath of office and is now President of the United States for the next four years. I have attached his speech that he gave. I would like you to watch it for a couple of different reasons.

The first of course is the sheer importance of the event ever for those of you who are not American citizens.

The next is I would like you to tell me what you think the message of his speech is, or the common ideas he is trying to get across.

Finally look at how he delivers his speech, what qualities of oral presenting is he doing and which of those can you use in your presentation tomorrow.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/VjnygQ02aW4" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Tags: Social, speech

Mr. Toa and I have been impressed with the way many of you have worked through phase 1 of our Inventors Convention. This week is the big day when you will present your speech in first person as your chosen inventor. Here are some tips to remember.

Know your material thoroughly. Put what you have to say in a logical sequence. Ensure your speech will be captivating to your audience as well as worth their time and attention. Practice and rehearse your speech at home or where you can be at ease and comfortable, in front of a mirror, your family, friends or colleagues. Use a tape-recorder and listen to yourself. Videotape your presentation and analyze it. Know what your strong and weak points are. Emphasize your strong points during your presentation.

When you are presenting in front of an audience, you are performing as an actor is on stage. How you are being perceived is very important. Dress appropriately for the occasion. Be solemn if your topic is serious. Present the desired image to your audience. Look pleasant, enthusiastic, confident, proud, but not arrogant. Remain calm. Appear relaxed, even if you feel nervous. Speak slowly, enunciate clearly, and show appropriate emotion and feeling relating to your topic. Establish rapport with your audience. Speak to the person farthest away from you to ensure your voice is loud enough to project to the back of the room. Vary the tone of your voice and dramatize if necessary

Tags: Social, speech

Sometimes between report cards and life the blog gets put on the sidelines…but NOT our brand new fancy dancy wiki’s that each student has gone and developed. Each student is researching a different inventor in preparation for creating a 1st person speech. To accomplish this we have decided to present all of our findings in a wiki that way their research is readily available to anyone else. At the same time students will be using their wiki to document their progress on inventing a new invention after the Chinese New Year. I have added their wiki links to my blog roll. As a guest when you go to the wikis you need to go to “Invention Convention” on the side bar, that is the link to all their current work. Take the time to learn something, they are making great progress!

Tags: invention convention, Social, wiki

I forgot to include pictures from the Global Native Day. Enjoy.

We are beginning our study on the invention convention. This project requires that you learn about a famous inventor, and then develop a first person speech. You need to have learned about the inventor and be able to answer the following questions.

Question #1: Who is the inventor and what about their life impacted their ability to create the invention?

Question #2: What is the invention and how did it come to be invented?

Question #3: How did the invention affect society at that time?

Question #4: Is the invention still used today?  Why?  How? Modifications?

Question #5: Could this invention have an impact on the future? Explain.

As you research think about how you are going to present this information. What are the logical sub-questions that go with each BIG question?  How are you going to organize it? What are you going to do to make sure the audience learns something about your inventor. What extras will you add to make it stand out?

Here is a copy of the rubric for you to use.

Tags: Invention

Welcome to the new year.

I hope that you all had a restful and relaxing winter break. I headed back to Edmonton, Canada and froze….it was around -35 and was very uncomfortable. Now that I am back I am having a great time with the jet lag and have been up at 2:30am for the past two nights. Hopefully this will pass soon.

I see that many of you have let us know what you did over the past few weeks…not too much extra school work.

For this term we are now getting ready to start the Inventors Convention…woo hoo…