Pilot Planning Grant

Report summarizing key findings of focus groups assessing Georgians' attitudes and opinions regarding the development of a plan for providing affordable insurance coverage statewide

Session B-4: STEM Integration: Statistics is the Connection

In this activity, participants will complete a STEM-integrated lesson incorporating problems in aerodynamics. Using the mathematical, science and engineering practice standards, they will design and model parachutes to determine a life-size chute to support their body weight. Participants will also consider design criteria for rate of descent, and graphically represent data and mathematical information as a scatter plot

STEM Storytelling: Using Picture Books to Integrate Mathematics - Dare to Tinker

This series of activities invites students to engage in a design challenge that elicits mathematical and scientific thinking. In the first activity, the picture book The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires will be used as a catalyst to discuss the engineering design process as experienced by the protagonist, a little girl. Suggested questioning techniques and inferential reasoning strategies will focus on the trials and tribulations, frustrations, and successes achieved by the little girl. Additionally, discussion prompts are included to provide students an opportunity to reflect on the little girl as a mathematician and scientist as she takes action and makes decisions throughout her design journey. This book is utilized at all grade levels to introduce the subsequent activity. In the kindergarten activity, students will focus on constructing a vehicle to carry a pet the longest distance down a ramp. Learners will begin by exploring a set of Brickyard Building Blocks materials, determining how they could be utilized in building a vehicle, and then working cooperatively to construct their pet transport. After testing their vehicle and measuring the distance each prototype has traveled, students will analyze the class data while discussing which vehicles traveled the furthest, shortest, and what characteristics of a design may contribute to the vehicle’s performance. In the first-grade activity, students will use Brickyard Building Blocks in addition to common materials to complete the given design challenge. Students will examine the performance of their vehicle by measuring the distance it travels using non-standard units, and compare their data to that of their peers. The second-grade activity uses common materials to address an engineering design challenge: make a “magnificent” transportation vehicle for an animal passenger that can travel a minimum distance of 1 foot past the end of a foam ramp when released at the top of the ramp. In addition, students will analyze the “cost” of building their animal transport vehicle and will collect and analyze distance data to determine which design features of the various vehicles built led to the longest travel distances

STEM Integration: Math, Meet Biology!

Join us for three hands-on, inquiry-based activities integrating mathematical and scientific thinking. First, explore patterns in the powers of ten and use this information to sort a set of images and design a scale model of an E. coli\u27s DNA. Then, simulate a colorful biotechnology application using new tools and laboratory skills. Art, science, and math intersect in an activity merging coordinate geometry, symmetry, and biotechnology skills. NGSS and CCSS practice standards will be demonstrated

STEM Storytelling: Using Picture Books to Integrate Mathematics - Who Lives Here?

This series of activities invites students to explore animals and their habitats, classify “animal” figures by habitat, sort, represent, and analyze data. In the first activity, the picture book Listen to Our World by Bill Martin, Jr. and Michael Sampson will be used to discuss eleven different animals and their habitats. Questioning strategies will focus on student comprehension and inferential reasoning skills related to why each animal lives in a particular type of habitat. This book is utilized at all grade levels to introduce the subsequent activity. The grade-level activities that follow integrate students’ knowledge of animals and their habitats with classification and data analysis activities. Students will be expected to use data representations to answer mathematical questions developmentally appropriate for their grade. In the kindergarten activity, the focus will be on classifying animal figures into preferred habitats. Students will work together to assemble a class pictograph of their animals, and will use counting and comparing strategies to make sense of this representation. The first-grade activity extends the sorting of the figures into student-generated categories and formally introduces the mathematical relations “greater than”, “less than”, and “equal to” for comparison of data. The second-grade activity uses a constructed bar graph to reason within, between, and beyond the data collected after sorting the animal figures into habitat categories. Two turtle figures will be used to make comparisons and determine which habitat is most appropriate for each turtle based upon observed differences. As a formative assessment, students can match the animals that were introduced in the book to their habitat using a set of animal cards and habitat cards. Using habitat images, students can make inferences about how the habitat can provide basic needs for the animal that lives in the habitat. Students may also suggest additional animals that may live in a particular habitat. An extension activity for older students uses locations given in the book to map the animal’s habitat on a world map and use this “infographic” to answer questions. The focus of this activity is to use knowledge of latitude, longitude, and relative temperature on Earth to make inferences about the habitats of the animals in the story

Session F-4: Quadratic Functions: As Simple As A, B, C

Participants will engage in several hands-on, minds-on activities that demystify applications of quadratic functions. By exploring simple, yet interactive exercises, student will understand that this function is more than just a formula of a, b, and c. Participants will walk away with several lessons that can be easily adapted to any classroom. This session is appropriate for Grades 8-10

Woven Cultures: New Insights into Pictish and Viking Culture Contact Using the Implements of Textile Production

THIS PAPER PRESENTS A new approach to Pictish and Viking culture contact in Orkney using the material culture of everyday life, focusing in this case on implements used in textile production. The production of textiles was a major component of everyday life between the 5th and 12th centuries and the tools of production have survived well in the archaeological record. This paper uses a study of the implements used in textile production from six Viking and Pictish period sites on Orkney to assess the nature of textile production at this time and investigate whether or not it was affected by the arrival of Scandinavians. The results demonstrate that significant changes took place at the beginning of the Viking Age, with different thicknesses of thread being spun and woven, new materials and styles of artefacts being used, and new types of tools employed for particular tasks. The early Viking Age (9th–10th centuries) produced a great variety of textile tools, representing both Pictish and Scandinavian practices, suggesting a time of transition in which both Pictish and Viking styles were accommodated

Payday lending: regulation is a forward step, but there are lessons to learn from this industry

Payday lending schemes in the UK are often vilified as expensive and exploitative, and many welcomed their regulation. But that shouldn’t be the end of it. Karen Rowlingson, Lindsey Appleyard and Jodi Gardner argue that we need to look closer at why people use these services in the first place, and suggest that we could learn from some aspects of their business model in order to improve others