Bird Cacophony

That's Perplexing

Is this ad true?

Why not do your own ad? Penultimate? iMovie? 

Where are you going to put the ad?

Scientific Nomenclature

This activity aims to take out the esoteric nature of scientific names. Using the dragonfly stimulus sheet that you can download from this post, I ask students to find a texture or colour from some old National Geographic magazines. They use this portion to stick onto the top set of wings.

Then students use the Wikipedia (or some other source) to find Greek or Latin roots that describe their wings and name their dragonfly.

They look great displayed together, as a swarm of dragonflies. There are labels for each dragonfly too.

BOMDAS 2 PEMDAS

Recently, I have been moving the students from BOMDAS to BIDMAS, so indices are included in order of operations. After this TED-Ed animation though, I am using PEMDAS.

First, show the video.

Then, discuss, asking what is the video about? Will students say Order of Operations? Will anyone know PEMDAS? Will anyone recall BOMDAS, or BIDMAS?

Students watch the video again, this time writing down expressions that are shown. Do they really equal 0?

Students make up five of their own expressions that equal 0, the more complicated, the better.
Use calculators to check expressions equal 0.

As extension, spot the mistake in the video. At 2:33, the expression closes first a multiplication which is to the right of a division, even though this order of operations has the same result as the technically correct order. Can anyone create an expression where you must complete a division before a multiplication?

Isn't the dragon cool? Why not draw a different mythical creature composed of digits?