Ms. Bearse's Site

With the few people that braved the weather on our snow day, we worked on money math in 1L.

We are representing values using different combinations of coins. We’re looking at how to write money as a number of dollars, or also a number of cents. These ideas of place value, will be a theme for a while in our class.

Grade 9s did their first 3 act math task today. For 3 act tasks we watch a video, or see a picture, and then we notice and wonder things about the initial situation. We think about information that we’d want to know, or we make connections to other concepts we’ve learned or questions we’ve solved.

Taco cart act 1 video

After watching the video and doing some initial thinking, we look at what more information would be needed to solve the problems we want to solve.

Act 2 of the problems start with more released information, in this case, 2 distances, and 2 speeds.

And students set about calculating the missing information, and determining who would get to the taco cart first.

We work standing up because it encourages collaboration. The vertical surface can be seen around the room, so we can all learn strategies from each other.

We consolidate the learning (today’s learning was about the pythagorean theorem, and how to communicate math solutions) in a discussion using student work as the starting point.

The 3rd act is a concluding video/image which shows the answer to the problem, so we all can know the answer.

Grade 9s worked today on a task of circling all the numbers from 1 to 100 in order. The task was first done independently.

And then later done as a team to see if it could get done faster that way.

What is interesting about this task is that after a little while, a pattern emerges, if everyone is taking turns and using their own marker.

Every number is in a quadrant. Once we recognize that, we can plan effectively, and improve our strategy!

Groups began to get up, and cluster close together

People helped others find their next number

And we found great success in our teamwork.

What had originally taken over 10 minutes to do independently could be accomplished in under 2 minutes in a well organized team.

We brainstormed what it looks like/sounds like/feels like to be in a good team afterwards, and are going to refer back to our list over the course of the term.

In our 1L class, we are working on numeracy concepts, and have looked at adding to start with. We are really good at adding 2 numbers to make 10.

With this game board each player takes turns placing 2 markers on circles that add to make 10. There’s some strategy involved, because each player is trying to build the longest chain of their colour marker.

We played for a bit, and then had a class tournament complete with a competition bracket. We are now really good at adding to 10. We’ll keep practicing this skill over the term.

Grade 9s started today with a problem to solve.

On the cards is a grid, a city plan. Each row and column can have one building of each height (1 floor, 2 floors, 3 floors, 4 floors). On each side of the plan is a number which tells how many buildings are visible from that position.

We developed good strategies to solve the logic problem, and worked on our group collaboration and speaking in French.

Sometimes it seemed really tough to get started. There are many perspectives to consider!

We worked together and found that each of the different puzzle boards could be solved using a similar method. Some perseverance was definitely required!

Grade 10s are writing their exam today. It’s been a good semester! Best of luck to everyone.

Today we worked on our interview skills. We did an inside circle/outside circle activity where we practiced answering questions like “what was the biggest challenge you faced this year”, “what are you proud of”, “what learning skill improved the most over the course”.

We had inside or outside circle move and then we answered more questions.

Then we practiced speaking for 5 minutes in partners for an interview carousel.

One partner spoke about their experience this term, for 5 minutes, as they will during our interview. Their partner listened, took notes, and prompted as needed. They switched roles after giving feedback. We used team shake to make different groups and practiced several times. We are getting more confident with practice!

We worked on distance time graphs today, relating speed with the slope. We used this graph game.

We noticed that we need to move the stick man at different speeds, forward and backwards to match the graph

If the graph shows a flat horizontal section, it is because the guy is not moving.

We applied our new knowledge to look at EQAO questions like Kenny’s big adventure

Grade 9s worked on figuring out all of the angles presented in our box of blocks, without measuring!

Some groups compared shapes, and used their knowledge of the interior angles of a regular hexagon as a basis for comparison. We also can have a nice conversation about fractions here!

Knowing that a square has angles of 90, and this trapezoid has an acute angle of 60 (see above) we can figure out that the light rhombus has an angle of 30 since 90+60+30=180 and as you can see they add up to a straight angle above!

Some groups had good comparison methods…3 acute angles added to make 90 so each angle must be 30.

Some added 6 acute angles together to make 180 so each of the acute angles must be 30. (180/6=30)

some took it even farther! It takes 12 to go around a full circle, so 360/12 gives us the value for each acute angle of the rhombus. We went on to discuss the value of an exterior angle for this 12 sided shape, and what each interior angle would be, and what the sum of interior angles would be, and the sum of exterior angles too.

we can build interesting patterns and see that there are parallel lines and transversals shown here. We can see the z,f,and x patterns. We can see supplementary angles. We can also calculate the angles of empty space shown. Around each junction, we can also add angles to make 360.

We are working on our final portfolio task: solving for unknown angles using many strategies.