Ms. Bearse's Site

Today we worked on reviewing trigonometry with grade 11s and linear systems with grade 10s.    We used a method of partner work where peers will be helping each other and working with a variety of people, so we are building our math skills and our people skills too!

Partners sit across the desk from each other and both work on solving a math problem on a card in front of them.  After everyone has the right answer we start with one side staying as the expert in that problem, and their partners across from them will shuffle one seat to their right and be the one trying the new problem in front of them.  They have the help of the expert across the table if they need it.  The goal is for the new person to the question to become an expert in that question, because the other side of the partnership, the old expert will be moving one seat to their right.  

The strategy is nice because everyone is doing math for most of the class time, and everyone has an expert nearby that can help them if they are struggling.

We’ve had a few hot days this week, and it’s getting hard to focus in our math classroom.  The grade 10s took a field trip today to do a work period in an air conditioned hallway at the Queen’s ARC.

Everyone worked really hard!  Good job team 🙂

Algebra tiles are manipulative math tools that allow us to visualize a variety of math concepts.  We are learning about how to represent expressions and simplify expressions using algebra tiles.

The small squares represent 1, the rectangles represent x, and the big square represents x squared.  Reds are positives and blues are negatives.

We made pictures with the tiles, and then had to simplify them by eliminating all “zero pairs” (identical tiles in opposite colours add up to zero)

Cool bike!This may have been a dog….we’re still not sure.

In the end, the simplified versions look something like this.

Here’s a video of a speech by a former KC student about some of his journey post high school/university, and the lessons he’s learned.

In grade 11 today we looked at how to start word problems.

We talked about what assumptions we can make, and what extra information we might need to ask for.  

We drew pictures to model the situation.

And then we broke down the distance we were looking for into two parts.  We used trigonometry to solve for one part, and we needed to use unit conversions before adding the second part.

We’re getting really good at solving for sides and angles in right angle triangles now!

Grade 9s completed their germination experiment today.  We had designed different experiments that tested the effects of variables on the germination of beans. 

Many groups had big successes!  We are presenting our germination data as a fraction and also as a percent.

Some people used soil during he first step.

Looking at the class results as a whole, it appears the beans in soil grew better.

Here’s one that was growing in the dark for a week.  It grew long and pale, not green like the others.

There were some other groups that had less success…

These beans were rotting…and gooey and slimy and stinky.  They are now in the garbage!

All viable beans have been planted, and we are now going to measure their growth rates for the next week.

We learned today about progressive muscle relaxation and how to calm our bodies down when we are feeling stressed.

We use the following poster to help us remember the stretches

Emma Jane is our adolescent care worker, she helps us with any issues that are affecting us.  She also has a puppy that she’s fostering.  Sydney will be a service dog in the future.

We learned how our thoughts can affect our feelings and our behaviour.

Hopefully we can work on choosing positive behaviours and thoughts so our feelings can be positive too!

We made lots of different quadrilaterals with toothpicks today.  

We also looked at making right angle triangles (verified by using the Pythagorean theorem).

The challenge of today was to make a rectangle with the perimeter of 12 toothpicks.  There were a few different answers!

We predicted whether the area would be the same since the perimeter was the same, and then calculated to prove that the areas are all different.  The more square shaped (the closer the value of length and width) the more area the shape held.

The next challenge was to choose one of the original rectangles with perimeter 12, and try to reduce the perimeter while increasing the area.  We also tried to increase the perimeter and reduce the area.  

The top rectangle has a smaller perimeter and a bigger area than the rectangle with perimeter of 12 shown below it.

What do you notice?  What do you wonder?
lesson credit and dimensions of sod and garden