Ms. Bearse's Site

How steep are those stairs?

May 10, 2017

We went around Queen’s campus and measured some stairs. These ones were on an old building, the Victoria school building main stairs.

We measured rise and run, and walked up the stairs to look down to see if it seemed steep.

We also looked at the stairs at Tindall field.

We measured the big stairs and also the small stairs, and compared the slopes.

Turns out that the steps are in proportion with each other. 3 little steps for each big step. They have the same slope! Look at those rulers.

We had fun, and enjoyed the spring weather, and now have a good idea of what slope, rise and run mean.

Pattern Circuit

May 4, 2017

Our homework last night was to come up with figure 1,2,3 of a pattern.

We set up the room with a pattern per desk, and then we rotated around the stations determining the pattern rule: what the change is between figures, what stays the same each time, what figure 4 would be, what figure 0 would be, and whether it is linear or not.

We are working on expessing our understanding in so many ways.

Good work today!

Good Communication

May 3, 2017

We are working on problem solving, and showing complete, well communicated solutions. Today we had 6 groups set up each with a question on a chart paper. We worked on whiteboards as a group to solve the problem, and communicated out answer fully on the chart paper with the marker colour we were given.

We then brought our marker with us as we rotated to the next station, and we used it to add to the solution that was presented, or to highlight good parts of their answer.

We are working on making a list of things that are present in well communicated and well justified answers.

Visual Patterns

May 2, 2017

We explored some of the patterns at Visualpatterns.org and worked on extending the 3 terms by creating term 4,5 and jumping to fimd term 10. We also worked backwards to term 0. We made pictures and tables and graphs to determine if the growth patterns were linear or non linear. Some of us worked on making equations for the growth we see in the patterns.

Some patterns were pretty tricky.

We had to look carefully to see how the pattern was growing. Some grew in multiple places.

We looked for what didnt grow. We coloured the constant bits blue.

We then looked for what was growing, and how.

We made an equation that was C=(n)(n+1)(2)+3 since each rectangle was going to have the dimensions of n by n+1 and there were always two rectangles, and the constant was 3 which had to be added on at the end.