Higher Thinking Skills

Both the Intel and Thinkfinity are great tools to use in the classroom today.  They are good ways to mix up the monotony of straight lecture and note taking.  These two tools get students to start thinking outside the stereotypical box. 

While I see a lot of potential for the Intel tools in English and Social Studies, and even Science classrooms, I am still struggling with how to use them in the Math classroom.  I was only really able to come up with one idea to use with the Intel tools and that is Geometric proofs.  I took a peek at my fellow Math comrades ideas, and I see that they have come up with a couple of other good ideas (good job Math people!!).  One of the things I love about Math is that it is so structured, but one thing I hate about Math is that it is so structured.  Wait a minute you say?  That's right, I love the structure, but I hate how rigid that it seems sometimes.  I'll admit, I'm not that creative until I'm given a well defined avenue, then I'm off to the races  So coming up with ideas is sometimes a struggle for me.  Maybe this is a way to get students to reach high levels of thinking skills - brainstorm ideas for us to use these tools in the classroom!  Only thing is, I find it scary to not have sketched outline of where I'd like my students to end up at the end of our Intel brainstorm... 

However, the Thinkfinity tools, namely http://illuminations.nctm.org/ could be very useful in the classroom.  Not only are there activities that I can use with my students in the classroom, but even lessons for me to draw ideas from.  Some of the activities can be used in class to help students have good visual support for what is being discussed in the lecture portion of class.  One activity I was playing with is called Shape Cutter.  Shape Cutter could be used for various different topics.  It could be used to explore different characteristics of geometric shapes, or even help students understand how to find the area of a non-perfect shape, by cutting the shapes into smaller, known shapes.  I think Shape Cutter could really get students to investigate the qualities of given shapes and use the tool to help them solve problems such as the ones I mentioned above.