We’re growing beans!

Today I was invited to do a lesson in a colleague’s grade 10 applied math class. We’re going to do a long term activity that starts off with germinating some beans. I used to do this task all the time at KCVI, and packed up the beans when we moved to KSS, but due to windowsill limitations, I’ve not embarked on the task again, until today.

We wondered a bit as a class about how to grow beans in the classroom, and if different beans grow differently. We have the old beans from 2014, but I was nervous that they might not germinate, so I also got some new beans last night.

Each group of 3 students made a team name, and chose either old beans or new beans. We counted the beans, wrapped them in paper towel, dunked them in water and then put them in a baggie on the windowsill. We also estimated what fraction or percent of each type of bean will germinate. We will compare this to our actual results which we’ll explore next week. We’ll plant the beans and water them and measure them as they grow, and graph them and make some predictions. It’ll be great! Stay tuned for updates.

After starting our bean project we did some dot talks and explored the idea of multiplication as an array, or as a “groups of” model.

We next got out the base 10 blocks and worked on representing multiplication.

Here is 2×7 as 2 groups of 7 or a 2×7 array.

Above we did 3×5 as 3 groups of 5, 5 groups of 3, or an array that is 3×5.

Here is 9×10, not quite a square.

Here is 10x11done with a 10×10 and 1 bar of 10.

Here’s 12×13, we can see it as a width of (10+3) and a length of (10+2). We can count this as 100+30+20+6 which is 156. Area models are so important. It was nice to practice with manipulatives.