Challenges for Elementary School Students (CHESS)

Iowa City Session 1 - June 16-27, 2008

Discovering Advanced Math All Around Us - 1 pm-4 pm

This course is an exploration into the advanced math that is found all around us in our every day lives…

With an investigative approach that includes deriving equations, building models, decoding messages and more, students will discover the advanced math concepts that are found within physics, earth science, art, nature, history and anthropology. Students will create hypotheses, test their theories with experiments and work together to develop their complete understanding of these advanced topics.

Instructor

Hillary Mills is a middle school Math & Art teacher for gifted students at the Odyssey School in San Mateo, CA. She is an active participant in the Math Teacher Institute at The Exploratorium in San Francisco and is part of a two-teacher team that creates and develops innovative and investigative math curriculum for gifted middle school students. She received a Bachelor of Science in Environmental Systems from the University of California San Diego and completed her thesis on middle school earth science curriculum development through the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. She has also worked as a naturalist and outdoor educator through out California and Baja California, Mexico for many years.