Ms. Bearse's Site

  
We took time away from class to watch a presentation by Theatre Complete all about gender issues.  

  We had a guest today.  A former KC grade 9, back to impart some words of wisdom.

He is a math rapper. If you don’t understand “mx+b” or “SOH CAH TOA” yet, don’t worry…. You will soon.
  

   
   
We’re making tesselating hexagons to put on the wall.  Today we learned about regular shapes, and how to determine their angles.  We also learned that some shapes tesselatw well, and others do not.  We’re decorating our walls tomorrow with the hexagons.

we’re trying something new!  We’re going for a brief body break partway through class to refocus.  It takes 5 minutes, but wakes us up.  Today we saw a stop sign…and verified that it is an octagon. 

We’re exploring diagonals of quadrilaterals in grade 9 and 10 right now.  In grade 9 we use rulers and protractors to see if the diagonals are rhe same length, bisect each other, and are perpendicular.  In grade 10 we use coordinate points to do the same thing, calculating with the distance, midpoint and slope formulae.

   
 
(These two really wanted this picture online)

Sometimes tests don’t go so well….there are a few reasons for that in Grade 9 math.

1. Inadequate preparation
2. Anxiety about the first test in high school
3. Time management during the test
4. Not checking work

We reflected on the results of the first test, and came up with some things we can change before the next test, during the next test, and aftr we’re done (but before handing it in)

  
We’ve reviewed our errors to see what types we tend to make, so we can focus on that type next test.

We’re motivated to make a change!

  
Some are working in groups to finish questions accurately and quickly.  There’s something for each of us to improve.

 We cut out quadrilaterals, found midpoints of each side, joined them and found that it makes a parallelogram in the middle….every single time!  
    
We tried the same activity with triangles.  The inner triangle is 1/4 the area of the big triangle.  It’s a scaled down version.

there’s an ultimate frisbee tournament today.  We took a break from indoor math to go watch the frisbee game, and do some math at the field. 

 we estimated the dimensions of a frisbee using objects of known size.  Since we don’t have rulers in our pockets, we used shoes which have their length in cm written inside.

We also estimated the perimeter of the fence around the field, we looked at the slopes of the stairs and bleachers, and compared the areas of the frisbee field with the scoring zones.  

  
What comes next?