Ms. Bearse's Site

We put painters tape on the wall to make an X.  

We looked at the opposite angles and measured them.  We noticed that they are the same!

We then drew lines that were parallel.  They needed the same angles!  The obtuse angles were the same and the acute angles were all the same.  Also the acute angle plus the obtuse angle was 180 degrees.

We are working hard to prepare for tests tomorrow.

We are making sure we can do all types of problems, and asking for help from our peers when we’re stuck.

We kicked off our angle week festivities with a reading of “Sir Cumference and the Great Knight of Angleland”.  Many thanks to our enthusiastic student readers.  

We learned and practiced how to use a protractor to measure angles in a triangle.  We also discovered that the sum of the angles in a triangle is 180 degrees.

We have some tests and tasks coming up soon.  We are working on different ways to review.  Sometimes when you don’t have a lot of time, this method can help you target your review to the areas you need the most help in.

We made lists of “I can” statements, left one column for a check mark (which you check off when you can prove that you can do whatever is in the statement) and a third column for the proof.  In this case we are going to do 3 questions and verify answers in the back of the book.  Students get to choose their own questions, do at least 3 of each type of question, and then check off their skills.  If some areas are tricky, they should get help on those topics early.

All review packages are due on test day (Friday this week)

We are using algetiles to help us visualize multiplying and factoring.  The area is the product of the dimensions, and the dimensions are the factors of the area.

We did an experiment today with the grade 12 class.  We wanted to determine which measurement had the biggest impact on the number of elastics it would take to explode the pumpkins.  Some groups thought the diameter, some thought the circumference, and some thought that the wall thickness would have the biggest impact.

We carefully added elastics to the pumpkins.

We videotaped them when we could tell that they were almost ready to explode.

The end result was a pumpkin that was cut in half.  We could easily measure the diameter and wall thickness and circumference.

Tomorrow we will make scatter plots with the data from all 13 pumpkins to see what variables had the biggest correlation with the number of elastics it took to explode the pumpkin.

We ate some of our beans today!  It is pretty exciting to see how much growth there has been since the first day of school.

We are working on some algebra concepts, and are using some puzzles to check our understanding and review concepts.

These sticks have a question on one end, and an answer on the other.  Students need to match them up.  We are practising expanding binomials, but other types of questions would work equally well.

To be extra tricky one stick doesnt match up, but looks pretty close to some of the question/answer pairs.  It become easy to see which groups are really doing the work, and which are just faking it by what they end up with at the end.
Another puzzle we did focuses on exponent laws and distributive property and combining like terms.  Equilateral triangles with either a simplified or unsimplified wxpression on all or two sides are matched up so that equal expressions touch.

There is only one way to fit the puzzle together.  Grade 9 students learned and practiced skills that were taught while some were away at leadership camp.    Groups were created explicitely with at least one or two “experts”.  Grade 10s used the same puzzle as a review of prerequesite skills before delving further into algebra and factoring.  Both puzzles were inspired by the blog mathequalslove.  Students worked very well in groups of 4 or 5 to complete these puzzles.

We had a head to head battle with a fast stacker and a slow stacker to see what their graphs will look like.

We figured out what head start would be needed to level the playing field and then tried out that scenario.  

We ended up with a pretty close score at the end of 2 minutes.

We had an activity with candy today since it was Hallowe’en.   We dumped out the m&m’s and counted them.  We then eliminated the candies with the m’s on the surface.  We counted again, then filled in our data chart over and over.

We ended up with data that was not linear.  We made a curve of best fit to show the trend.