Two Trains…

How many of you have seen a problem like this one?

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I’m a fan of taking a problem like this, one that you would assign for homework (in the “application” section of the exercises….and one that very few students even attempt….and someone will ask you to take it up next class) and bring it to the start of my lesson. I’ll teach our concept/idea through this problem. But we can’t just throw this problem up on the board and say “Let’s solve it”……because no will want to. There is no drive for any of us. Like Dan mentions here….who cares!

Who cares about the trains travelling…who cares that they are even trains….they could be bicycles, or cars playing chicken….but is changing the context really going to change how engaging the problem is to students? Dan argues no. I agree.  Before you read about this lesson check out this post on Real vs. Fake world….and the Circle Square lesson on 101qs.com which was an inspiration for changing the Two trains problem around.

Here’s my go at this one:

Show them this video:

ask What do you notice? What do you wonder?

Have students guess WHEN the two dots would meet?

Give some more info

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Have them guess on WHERE the dots will meet?

Have a discussion on what will be needed to determine the times and distances. Spend some time here on speed. Go over the relationship between distance, time, and speed.

Show them this image and have them makes some guesses on where the dots are now.

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then reveal

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Calculate the speeds of the dots. Have students go back to their original guess on time and find how far each dot would travel.  Who in the class is closest? Did anyone guess right?

Now help them generalize…

Create the equations

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If our lesson is on solving this using an algebraic technique we can teach them that here. Or maybe we want to show them the graphical solution. Either way we have taken the tougher question from homework that no one cares about and used it to set up and teach a skill.

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and finally,

I’m sharing this lesson now (before I teach it) with you hoping to get some feedback. Writing these lessons here also help me work out the details. This is week 4 of the #MTBos blogging initiative and its focus is lessons. I won’t get a chance to teach a lesson this week. Our school had final exams and then PD days in preparation for second semester. Good luck to all those starting up again!!

 

Catch the Spiral! 

Last May I shared my day-to-day planning spreadsheet for my grade 9 applied course. On that sheet I recorded the topic, tasks, and resources for each day of the semester. I used that as a resource for myself when teaching 1P through a spiral this semester. I found that having that sheet to go back too was super helpful and a time saver. This semester I followed that timeline except with a few tweaks here and there.

Since that sheet was so handy to have I made one similar for my MPM2D class. It was my first time spiralling that course and I wouldn’t go back to teaching through units again.

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I heavily relied on Mary Bourassa’s blog….she is amazing. She shares her day-to-day plan as posts on her blog and also shares all of her resources and handouts. Thanks so much Mary!!!

Spiralling in Academic vs. Spiralling in Applied

I struggled initially with deciding to spiral the MPM2D course because of my experience with MFM1P. I had previously taught the 1P course through activities and 3 act math problems so it was a no brainer to just mix up the order of the problems and tasks. It was an easy transition since I had all the resources. For the 2D course though, it had been a while and I had not taught it with a task/activity approach.

What I found to work best in the academic class was to learn all new ideas/topics through activities and productive struggle with some direct instruction thrown in as a consolidation. Unlike the 1P course where I switched tasks/topics daily, I stuck to a topic/idea for a few days or a week in the 2D course. Once, for example, the class was comfortable with transformations of quadratics we would switch to trigonometry for a week, then analytic geometry for a week, etc.

I felt that through spiralling and teaching through productive struggle my students were better problem solvers. They were not just waiting to be told how to solve a problem. They were always actively thinking about which ideas they had learned could apply to solve a particular problem. That confidence I saw allowed us to go more deeply into the content than ever before. We just didn’t skim the surface of the processes, algorithms, and algebra needed, we solved problems!!

If you wanted to spiral the 2D course or a similar course I thought I would share out my plan to help out. Here is my day-to-day plan with links, resources, Desmos activities, 3 Act tasks, assignments, homework, etc from my spiralled MPM2D course. (It’s not fully complete for every day but you’ll get a sense of how the class ran).

[aio_button align=”center” animation=”none” color=”blue” size=”medium” icon=”star” text=”See the plan” relationship=”dofollow” url=”https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O6xynI57e9iza6YTP9nEIu6DnbaEeL-KztV5js9xkwg/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true”]

Most files are either Smart Notebook, Apple’s Keynote, or PDF.

Get Apple’s Keynote on your Mac or on iOS.

 

 

Introducing Trig through Slope

Here is our lesson today to introduce trigonometry for the first time. We had spent a few days with solving problems with similar triangles. We are spiralling and have done  lots of work recently using slope and the distance formula to classify triangles. I wanted to capitalize on that familiarity with slope to introduce the tangent ratio for the first time.

We started with this….again

Most students like last time chose A and their reason was it was less steep. So I asked “How much less?” “How do we measure that?”……SLOPE was the response and they calculated the slopes to verify.

Next I had them do this…
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I stressed supreme accuracy and added “Try to create a size of triangle you think no one else will make”……I had them measure their rise and run and enter them in this table on the board.

Table

I also kept a running table in Desmos…

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As more students added their triangles I could hear them say, “I bet all the slopes should be the same” , “They’re all similar triangles” We took a moment to discuss similarities and make it clear we all have similar triangles and that the ratio between the rise and the run should all be the same. We also discussed why some of our triangles did not have a slope of 1.7. I had them repeat the process with an angle of 45 degrees.

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I said out loud that MY slope ratio was 1….and I could see all their heads bobbing up and down….”Yep, we got 1 too”.

Next….

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I asked them again to create an angle/triangle (Had them keep the same orientation of the triangle as I did in my diagram) that no one else would.

Measure the rise and the run, then calculate your slope. Keep your triangle and slope hidden, especially from ME.

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Keeping their angles and ratios hidden from me I said…”When I point to you tell me your angle….and I’ll magically tell you your slope” Cue the Oooohs and aaaahs.

I played up the magic bit. I held my calculator up to shield the screen from them.

I pointed at one student they told me “34 degrees”. I punched on my calculator mysteriously and said…”0.67.” The student yelled out….”Hey that’s right”. I went around the room pointing at students and telling them their slopes (ratios). I could see it on their faces, they wanted to know how I was doing this……Boom Let’s talk about Trigonometry.

So I said:

“In math we have these things called functions….they’re like black boxes that take an input and do some number crunching and spit out an output. One function you have used already is the square root function. You give the function 9 and it spits out 3. We math people use a symbol for this function so we all know what is going on. There is another function that will calculate the slope of a right triangle if you give it the angle. So we could write something like this “(I used one of the students angles).

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“This is what I was doing when you gave me your angles….I was using the function to calculate your ratio between rise and run. But we don’t usually use the term slope when we talk about right triangles. We use fancy words.” I had them draw a right triangle in their notes and we labeled it with Hypotenuse, opposite and adjacent. Screen Shot 2015-10-08 at 5.07.34 PM

“Instead of using a slope function…..we use the word TANGENT. And instead of using the word rise we use the word OPPOSITE and instead of run we use ADJACENT. So we can write this tangent function equal to the rise/run = opp/adj.”

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“And we math people don’t like to write too much so we really use this version.”

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Then we practiced using the tangent button on our calculators. They pretended to be the magicians and checked each others ratios. We practiced using the inverse tangent button to find angles.

Once we were comfortable we moved into writing the ratio and finding the angle out. We also used this example to write the tangent ratio of the other angle.Screen Shot 2015-10-08 at 2.21.05 PM

and then one more for lengths:

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Since we are spiralling I gave them the homework set (Mary Bourassa Style) to work on….here.

Tomorrow I’ll introduce the Sine and Cosine function.

Using slope here to introduce trig allows us to take something familiar and make something new. Students could see the progression happen and not have trig just thrown at them.

Would to love to hear your thoughts on this. How do you introduce trig?

 

Sneaking in Factoring

I started a series of new warm ups for my MPM2D class today. My goal is to sneak in factoring as warmups throughout the semester. By the time we need to learn it (like when we need to factor to solve equations) we will have mastered it already. I also previously snuck in multiplying binomials when we tackled quadratic patterns as Mary Bourassa did in her 2D class.

So today I gave them this slide and said I want you to solve a puzzle!

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They broke out their iPads and used the Algebra Tile app to put together the rectangle. The kids worked away and you could see them trying to put tiles in a way to make the rectangle

….and they soon found out that they had to fit a certain way!! 
On take up we made sure everyone had either my rectangle or a rotated version.

Then we did this one…..

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After we were done I asked the class: “If the combination of squares and rectangles makes up the area, what are the dimensions of the rectangle?” They had a little bit of a hard time here, but finally could see the x + 4 and the x + 2 as the length and the width. I then wrote …

 And then I heard some “aaah”s. We had previously seen both versions of the quadratic expressions and discussed why the factored form helped us out quite a bit if we wanted to find the x-intercepts.

We stopped there….It only took us 15 minutes. Tomorrow we will do a few more…..always writing the factored form after. I will also try to get students to notice efficient strategies to make the rectangles.

  • Why did you put 4 x terms along the width and 2 x terms along the length?
  • How does that relate to the number of singles?

Where I hope to go with these warm ups is to factor all types of trinomials:

  • Perfect Squares

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    This time…..make a square

… and get this…

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  • Trinomials of the Type ax^2 +bx + c


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  • Completing the square too!!!!
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This time…make a square




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We’ll be definitely working our way out of the app and onto paper with area diagrams…

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Factoring

 

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Completing the square

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Completing the square

I think working with these puzzles for the next few weeks first will give us a strong base when it’s time to factor to help solve equations and then complete the square. I think I’ll track all the warm ups we do like this and I’ll post them all!