Ms. Bearse's Site

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.

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.