Teaching Ideas

Ideas to teach math, music and programming

Math

Show current numbers can be any shape or form first. Let the student come up with 10 invented symbols they like and invite them to share their favorite number in their invented numeral system with their friends. Then invite them to share what each symbol means so friends can interpret the number correctly.
Show that counting is linear and infinite and decimal representation is arbitrary: Come up with a system that has less or more than 10 symbols, explain historic examples and again invite them to choose any number of symbols they like and share the numbers with their friends. At first the teacher will help them to interpret the number correctly and in time students should be able to count it on their own. (Perhaps by repetition alone?)

Help them think in relationships, introduce them to the notion of bottom early on. You don't even need to talk about category theory but just how operations in different contexts are related (I need to expand on this).

Besides scales and work in their piece and technique, invite students to invent their own melodies. Listen to their melodies each week and invite them to tweak parts or techniques to achieve different effects. Provide challenges for the next week by putting some constraint or requirement for the next invented melody.

Random character: Simple program that print random characters in a loop. Filter character. Stop when is found
Random color: A program that draws pixels in the window randomly, limit color choise, play with different values
Levels of abstraction: The idea that higher abstraction modules talking to the abstraction level just below it and staying at that level of abstraction. Think of a program that fits this. (Maybe a toy apollo simulator? Maybe a small problem we can actually solve in three or four layers)
Talking heads: Create methods that define behaviors for given actors. Like teacher or student... get creative (link)[https://twitter.com/SchoolDataNerd/status/1370239683624464393]

Exposure. Prefer original language plus subtitles in movies
When little. Use sign language to explain how words from different languages are the same thing
For parents that know different languages, translation game: Parents take turn saying a word in their native language, the child has a chance to translate to win a point, if it is unable to get the point the other parent has a chance to translate to earn a point, if no guesses the word proposer wins half a point. The child has a slight advantage because it can always guess first and 'steal' the points away.