3act Math

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.

[aio_button align=”center” animation=”none” color=”blue” size=”small” icon=”download-alt” text=”Download Now” relationship=”dofollow” url=”https://www.dropbox.com/s/4alwa51yhra2wgy/Speedy%20Squares.docx?dl=0″]

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!

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:

Dora to the Rescue

by Jon Orr

Next on Making Algebra Meaningful  – Dora to the Rescue!

Our goal is to tackle this beast from our expectations:

add and subtract polynomials involving the same variable up to degree three [e.g., (2x + 1) + (x^2 – 3x + 4)],using a variety of tools

and

multiply a polynomial by a monomial involving the same variable to give results up to degree three [e.g., (2x)(3x), 2x(x + 3)], using a variety of tools

Part 1 (Act 1) Being Curious

Continue reading →

Order Up – Making Algebra Meaningful

by Jon Orr

My first thought when creating my lessons is how can I get students curious! Sometimes curiosity will come out from Act 1 of a 3 Act math task. Or sometimes it’s from a puzzelly type open activity that makes students struggle.

Here is MY new struggle:

How can I make students curious when teaching collecting like terms, and eventually the distributive property?

Last year’s opener to teach collecting like terms:

  1. Give them a perimeter problem where the sides have an unknown value.
  2. Ask for an expression for the perimeter in terms of x.
  3. Now here is x….find the perimeter.

And that’s it! Every time I do this kids are confused and ask “Why didn’t we just have the value of x to begin with?”

I want a task that makes us curious and need to use like terms to simplify an expression.

Task 1: Order Up

Task 2: Dora to the Rescue

Order Up

Part 1 (Act 1): Being Curious

Continue reading →