Ms. Bearse's Site

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

We looked at a new puzzle today, these are called “solve me mobiles”.  We came up with some good strategies for solving for the unknowns.

We also applied our knowledge of Pythagorean theorem to help us solve a tricky area and perimeter problem.  We will be practicing how to explain our strategies and how to communicate our answers a lot this term!

Grade 9s have made up experiments involving beans.  We’ve talked a bit about what variables are, and how one variable might depend on another.

We’re looking forward to seeing how the beans grow over the next little while, and see which variables affect the growth the most.

Here’s something to think about as we start the school year.  There are interesting points made about technology, and patience.

In math class we know that it will often take a lot of hard work to accomplish our goals.  We need to be patient with ourselves, and keep working to move forward with our skills.  It is important also to acknowledge the appropriate use of technology, and to try to keep ourselves balanced, and to develop good solid connections with the people we have in our lives.