Author: Jon Orr

Speedy Squares

by Jon Orr

Last week I attended the annual OAME (Ontario Association of Mathematics Educators) in Toronto. It was so great to finally meet some of the people I’ve been tweeting with.

I was pumped to attend Mary Bourassa’s double session on great classroom activities. One of the activities that I’ve seen on her blog, but not used in my own classroom was Speedy Squares. So when I had an opportunity to try it, I jumped on it!

There is something special about doing the lessons yourself while learning about a lesson at a conference.

Read about the lesson:

You can read about the lesson on her blog here part 1 and here part 2.

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The big question: We want to determine how long it will take to build a 26 x 26 square out of link cubes.

More Curious

While actively building the squares I had a great idea to make the introduction to the activity a little more curious! So when I got back to my classroom I broke out the cubes and created this….

Maybe before the time trials of building the squares, we can dive into generating questions and wonderings first.

  • What is he making?
  • How many squares will he use?
  • How long will it take?

Now that we have generated questions….we can then move onto Mary’s awesome two day lesson.

Once students have got an answer to how long they would take to build the 26 x 26 square, you could show the video of me building it!

I’m really interested to see if elementary teachers can use this in their classes and what they come up with!

Trashketball – A Spiralled Lesson!

by Jon Orr

This was our multi-day, curriculum-spiralled, activity this week!

Day 1 – Filling the Bin!!

Let’s get curious!!…..I showed this video from Andrew Stadel, and took questions & wonderings:


We settled, (I chose) on the question on how many paper balls would fill a bin! They made predictions, too high, too low and right on!

They made paper balls and found their diameter. We agreed that each ball could be different so we recorded everyone’s diameter and averaged them to give the “average ball size”

IMG_1260

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Proportion Explosion

by Jon Orr

Since we are spiralling the curriculum in grade 9 applied, my math task choice is getting very picky! I always want to uncover more that one expectation in a lesson/task! In this task we used volume of spheres, solving proportions, and properties of linear relations.

Act 1:

We took questions and wonderings and then settled on the problem of Let’s see that balloon explode and when is that going to happen?
We guessed and recorded the guesses on our whiteboard for future comparisons!

Act 2: What will we need!

There were good conversations on this piece! I’m always surprised by how much kids know! Someone asked for the rate of water!!!! Wowsers! I assumed I might have to dig to get them to ask for that one. They also wanted me to say how much a balloon will hold…..which is where I wanted to direct them first.

Info to give and record:

As always, I made them guess for it! After revealing 12 inches….we converted to centimeters. Next it was their turn to go ahead and find the volume of the balloon. I find it so valuable to have discussions on why use a sphere to model the volume? Will we be correct? Is it ok we’re wrong?

Volume of the sphere/balloon

Act 2: Rate of Water

 
This is where the kids got lost a bit! They weren’t sure how to use this part exactly after just finding the volume of the balloon.  I stepped in and used some direct instruction on how to set up the proportion. Handout prepared:

Handout

FullSizeRender 14

Solutions

Act 3: The reveal

The extension is how we practiced solving a few proportions. We solved for the volume when the time was 10 seconds, 20 seconds, until kids saw the pattern.

10 seconds

10 seconds

After filling the table out, we found the first differences, discussed direct vs. partial linear relations!

Grab all the files to run in your class:

Apple Distinguished Educator Program

by Jon Orr

Yesterday I received some great news! I was accepted into the Apple Distinguished Educator class of 2015 program. 

Last year I was encouraged to apply by a few people. I’m so glad I did because the application process made me reflect on what I do in the classroom. Creating a video to show my story made me think about what it is about using videos, 3 act math tasks, iPads, iTunesU, or any other learning tool in class. 

Check out my video on using curiosity & technology to explore, discuss, and do mathematics.
All successful applicants are to attend a 5 day institute in South Florida in July. It will be amazing to meet educators from across North & South America. I’m sure it will be a week of amazing conversations with new ideas and new friends!

Special thanks to:

Sharon Drummond, Kyle Pearce, Rob Policicchio, and my wife, Scarlett for encouraging me to apply!

Dan Meyer, Andrew Stadel, and Michael Fenton and the #MTBos for awesome math lesson ideas and pedagogy ideas! I’ve learned and used so many amazing things from these teachers. Truly wonderful stuff!

I’ll see some of you real soon!