Ms. Bearse's Site

Today we used the “cup” as a unit of height.  Each group had only 4 cups and had to determine how many cups tall one group member was.

There were no restrictions given on how to arrange the cups or how to solve the problem.

Some groups wanted to use string, some wanted meter sticks, some wanted rulers…

Some groups used dividing, and some used multiplying….some used trial and error.

We stacked cups in the end to verify that our math was correct.
Most of us had calculated pretty accurately!

Today’s challenge has been an open question about a city plan.  In the 4×4 square grid there are buildings that are either 4,3,2, or 1 story, but only one of each height in each row or column.

The numbers on each side represent the number of buildings that can be seen from that vantage point.

We looked at different strategies for solving the problem, and how to use manipulative like linking cubes to help us.
With practice we got pretty good!

When faced with challenging problems, we have choices….we can give up and say “it’s too hard”, or we can keep trying….looking for new strategies, talking it over with other people, or sometimes just diving in and using trial and error.  

Some of us wanted an extra challenge and worked on a 5×5 grid!
We looked at strategies to solve these problems easily, and had our expert talk us through the process.

Great work!

Today’s intro challenge was to show 10 in as many ways as possible, and there were some impressively creative methods shown!

We can count out 10 things individually, or put them in an array, like the business cards.

Here’s a different array, a 2 by 5 array.

Some used money, showing adding and subtracting.

Some used dice to show how to make 10.

We even saw some languages!

And of course, everyone’s go-to manipulative for “10” is hands!

We also even had a push up representation!

Impressive!

We used our skill to decompose numbers and add and subtract, and also to help us when we multiply big numbers using the area model.

We are looking at 4 numbers and determining reasons that each number could be the one that doesn’t belong.  This takes a bit of creativity sometimes!  It’s neat to see that sometimes there are lots of different ways to figure out which one doesn’t belong.

This website is for students in Ms. Bearse’s classes at K.C.V.I. for 2017-2018. Please click on your course to get more specific information.

There is a calendar for each class that will show test dates and homework assigned.  Photos of our activities will be posted below.

Daily Schedule
Period A: grade 11 college math (room 208)
Period B: grade 10 academic French Immersion math (room 208)
Lunch
Period C:
Period D: grade 9 academic French Immersion math (room 208)

If you’re having difficulties with concepts that we’re learning in class please let me know.

Here are some learning skills rubrics for self evaluation

There is help available at school on Wednesdays in the library after school from the HYPE tutors from Queen’s.  There are also volunteer and paid tutors available.

Today we had 3 red cups and 2 white cups on each table.  The goal was to ask questions.  We came up with long lists of questions that we could answer, or questions that we were wondering about.

Some of us focussed on comparing the two cups, some calculated volumes and others calculated surface areas.  

Some of us played the cup game and then we got down to business….

Some of us stacked the cups, and figured out how many cups we need to make a stack as tall as the tallest group member.

We finally worked on the big intense challenge:  if white cups stack from the desk, and red cups stack from the floor, is there a magic number of cups that would create equal towers?

We made tables and graphs

And finally we tested our calculations

We used clinometers to determine the angle of elevation and calculate the height of the school.

Some of us used a level app instead.

Everyone needed to measure the distance to the  school as well.
We also used shadows and similar triangles to determine the height of people and other tall items .  We compared the shadow length of a meter stick to our shadows.

We have been practicing how to represent data in many ways.  For our practice investigation we looked at data given in a table, a graph and a paragraph.  We compared data by putting it all in the same format, and looking for trends

We are working on trigonometry, and have explored right angle triangles with a 30 degree angle.  We noticed that the sides of the triangles have consistent ratios.

Some of you asked if triangles that have angles other than 30 degrees have similar proportions.  Here’s a table of all of the ratios.  Don’t worry, you don’t have to memorize any of this.

trig tables (.pdf)

 Here’s your homework question.  Try it using the tables and also try it with your calculator.  Remember to put your calculator into degree mode.

In case you were wondering where I have been the past two days, I have been at a provincial math conference at St. Lawrence college.  We’ve been in session, doing math and hearing lots of math teachers and math experts telling us some new strategies.  We did some patterning, just like we’ve been doing in class.I got to hear some pretty inspiring speakers, who write blogs full of good ideas.

Ms. Farahani is here too.  Here she is, meeting a math celebrity, Dan Meyer.

He caused a lot of excitement before he spoke at the Grand Theatre.  There was a line to take selfies with him.

Here’s his info, if you want to see his math ideas

Marian Small told us all about how we can increase reasoning skills in our lessons.

And Gail Vaz-Oxlade, the host of ” ‘Til Debt Does Us Part” talked to us all about financial literacy.

The math continued on Saturday morning…..bring on the Alge-Tiles!

And Escher art