Broken plates

Madaba, Jordan
Monday, January 28, 2013

From Holt's "Geometry" textbook (the old one)

All these trips to ancient sites put me in the mood to try out a new project with my geometry students. I gave them a "plate shard" (pictured below), and they had to use geometric constructions to find and draw the correct size of the plate (perpendicular bisectors and the circumcenter, in case you don't remember). Next, they had to imagine what was on the plate based on the fragment I gave them. The fragment (below) was drawn by one of my students at my request. Alas, I can not draw worth a darn. The results were outstanding. See below!

Salt for lunch

Salt, Jordan
Friday, January 25, 2013

We arrived in Salt just as Friday mosque was letting out. We ate a nice lunch at the Al Salaam restaurant and then wandered up the stairs of this steeply terraced Ottoman city. Just enough of an outing for a Friday...

  

Tell Hisban

More wonderful frieze patterns...

Madaba, Jordan
Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Second stop on today's magical mystery tour was the Hisban Tell. What a fantastic site--beautiful to roam around with ruins from the Stone Age to the Ottoman Empire. Lots of open cisterns, too, so watch the kids!

Qasr al Mushatta

Amman, Jordan
Wednesday, January 23, 2013

This morning we set off with a small bus full of colleagues to see some of the local sites. Our original destination was the Ottoman city of Salt, but local events re-routed us to this fantastic site just a few miles from home: Qasr al Mushatta, an unfinished 8th century Umayyed palace. A newly installed plaque tells us that its partial re-construction was completed in 2011. Wonderful place!

Is that a Type I or Type II frieze pattern?

Used to reconstruct one of the arches?

Inscribed circles à la Andy Goldsworthy

Madaba, Jordan

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

We are just finishing up a constructions unit in Geometry class, and today I decided we'd try a project outdoors. I asked my students to research Andy Goldsworthy before today's class, and then I set them to doing their own version. 

At least I can say I exposed them to something new...

Hunting dolmen

Madaba, Jordan
Friday, January 11, 2013

After the crazy weather of the past 3-4 days, it was delightful to see sun and blue sky today. Almost all the snow was gone by mid-day and we headed out with colleagues to hunt for dolmen to the north of Madaba. We found several intact ones and several that had fallen in on themselves. Spectacular vistas, too.

Read more about dolmen...

Spring on the way already?

The real thing

Madaba, Jordan
Thursday, January 10, 2013

Late last night I looked out the window, and it was the real thing: snow! This morning we got up, baked cinnamon rolls for the neighbors, and headed out to make snowmen. It was the perfect kind of snowman snow: soft but easy to clump. A perfect way to spend a snow-day...

Not exactly snow...

Madaba, Jordan
Wednesday, January 9, 2013

It has been raining cats and dogs for the past few days here in Jordan. Today classes were cancelled due to inclement weather, and the question on every student's lips: "Will it snow?!" It finally started during lunch, and all the kids RUSHED outside to see it. Not exactly snow but a kind of huge, puffy hailstone. But good enough to makes things white for a while...

One last trip to the souq

Muscat, Oman
Thursday, January 3, 2013

We're back in Muscat and soon ready to return to our "real" lives in Jordan. We made one last trip to the Muttrah Souq today: the glittering Omani dresses, the wafting frankincense, the gold, the textiles from India...the assorted junk from China--we took it all in once more. It's been a great trip.