I find that seeing examples of math lessons and activities from other teachers helps me visualize how that activity could be used in my classroom. This is especially true while we’re teaching through this pandemic.
Let me kick off the sharing!
For 15 days in a row I recorded a quick (1 minute) summary from one of our lessons. I hope that seeing what I’m doing in my classroom can give you some comfort in what you’re doing in yours.
Here’s some background information on our school set up while we’re working through the pandemic.
My schedule for Quadmester 1 (we alternate from Week A to Week B until the middle of November 2020) :
WEEK A
Coverage Teacher. I’ll relieve teachers in 3 different math classes for 76 minutes each every day.
WEEK B
I’ll teach my grade 9 MFM1P (Applied) class for 300 minutes a day every day.
Notes: Day 0 was shot before our official start date in September.
Further exploring:
30 Days in 30 Minutes – A peek into my classroom [Pre-COVID]
Interested in more “peeks” into virtual classrooms?
I’m sure you’ve played the card game of war. It’s a classic: two opposing players split the deck, top card flips over for each player and high card wins.
In episode 11 Dan shares a tip that is at the center of game design: players must have choice.
This game, War 2.0 – A multiplying card game with choice asks players to make important choices to increase the likelihood of winning.
Rules:
players take 3 cards from a pile face down.
choose any 2 cards to flip over. Multiply them.
highest product wins (this is where the original game ends the round).
players can choose to flip over the third card if they think they can earn a higher product. BUT they must flip one of their original cards down first.
all players must decide if they are using their third card or not before anyone flips the third card.
winner is the player with the highest product. Mark a win on a tally for that player.
Modifications:
add or subtract instead of multiplying.
fractions (use more cards).
Sparking curiosity and fuelling sense making are so important when designing lessons and activities for our students to learn new ideas and we often overlook how our students will practice those ideas.
On the podcast I co-host with Kyle Pearce we often encourage teachers to embed purposeful practice into those carefully designed lessons.
Students will extend their use of patterning to connect different representations of linear relations. More specifically, students will be exposed to rates of change, calculating the slope of a linear relation, building linear equations, and solving linear equations.
The purpose of this Task is:
to help students develop an understanding of how various representations of linear relations are connected;
create a linear equation given two points; and,
solve linear equations.
Intentionality
As is true for any task, the intentionality or learning objective can vary depending on what mathematical thinking you are hoping to elicit.
The mathematical ideas we are trying to elicit when we use this task are connect various representations of linear relations, build linear equations from two or more points, and solve linear equations.
This will be achieved by first having students watch how the cost of renting a scooter is related to the time rented. You can learn more about the actual scooters and the pricing structure at lyft.com.
Spark Curiosity
WARNING!!! Be sure to share with your students the importance of wearing Bike Helmets while riding; we certainly should have. We realize that you may not want to do this activity with your students as a result of our poor judgement.
Show students this video:
Ask students to engage in a notice and wonder protocol. ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that comes to mind is fair game.
Here’s some of the “everything and anything” students noticed and wondered on chart paper:
I noticed that they were riding scooters;
I noticed that they weren’t wearing helmets;
I noticed the map;
I noticed that the cost changes;
I wonder where that was?
I wonder how much the scooters cost?
I wonder what the range means?
Now you can focus in on the big question of the task.
How much does it cost to ride the scooter the entire length of the outlined route?
We can now ask students to make a prediction using their estimation skills. Ensure you use the Too high and too low strategy. Ask them what is a wrong answer? How much would be too high? How much would be too low?
Students will also be uncomfortable here because the length of time of the trip or how the scooter charges customers has not been revealed yet. We encourage you to hold off on revealing these answers because it will build anticipation. Anticipation is what students need so they can start formulating a plan.
At this point, we want to give students the opportunity to improve their predictions by engaging in developing a problem solving strategy.
Ask them: If we are going to improve our predictions what information will we need? Have students share with an elbow partner before sharing this information with the entire class.
As students voice the information they wish to see.
Ask them: “And what would you do with that information if I gave it to you?”
Listen in very closely here. Their responses will give you allow you to assess their prior knowledge and also their thinking into solving this problem.
Slowly Reveal More Information
Once students have asked for information reveal the information that you do have.
Reveal a key fact:
The cost of renting a scooter depends on the time the scooter has been rented for (You may want to reveal depending on your students’ prior knowledge that there is a flat fee to get on the scooter).
Reveal three snapshots showing the cost at different points in the trip. We include three here so that we can verify that the relationship between the cost and the time is linear.
Reveal the total cost of the entire trip.
With this information students can start to develop strategies to determine how much it will cost for a 15 minute and 9 second trip.
Fuel Sense Making:
LEARN HOW TO FUEL SENSE MAKING
MAKE MATH MOMENTS ACADEMY
Create memorable moments in your classroom using our ready made tasks
Full Video Walkthroughs to show you key moves to improve student learning.
After consolidating the learning using student generated solution strategies and by extending their thinking intentionally, we can share what the actual cost of the trip was:
