Activities for Workplace Math

College math classes will bring you a variety of learners. Among them will be the students who are taking their last math class ever and they really have not patience for math. This brings your challenge as a teacher to keep these students as engaged as possible and provide as much evidence for your students on how learning math will benefit them in the future. The activities presented last class did an excellent job in achieving this. The first activity presented was a finance lesson geared toward the grade 11 MBF 3C class. This activity takes place the day after teaching the class how to calculate interest. In this activity, student groups are provided with the terms and information on different credit cards. The teacher then provides a scenario to the entire class where something is purchased and based on their information each group needs to calculate their interest and the benefits of using this credit card plan. The class then compares the results and discusses their thought on the benefits and disadvantages of credit card plans. Using actual credit card and debit plans is definitely a benefit for students as this develops life skills for everyday budgeting and banking.

The second activity was directed towards grade 12 MAP 4C class, it also developed student knowledge directly applicable to useful life skills. This activity allows students to design a house plan and make decisions based on a budget. The teacher provided a floor plan with dimensions of each room and students could choose from an array of tiles, hardwoods, carpeting, and paint colours to decorate their home. A worksheet is also provided for students to calculate the total cost of each room after they make their decisions. In class we were to choose three rooms and calculate the total cost however it was mentioned that this would make an excellent culminating assignment with a few adjustments. Some of the changes that could be made are 1)have students complete the entire floor plan 2) re-calculate some rooms using different materials and compare prices 3) Have students discuss the accuracy of their estimates i.e. some of the missing variables in the activity such as hidden costs/savings.

 

Math Gamification for Senior Classes

In my last math class, my fellow teacher candidates presented lesson activities that were excellent examples of incorporating gaming aspects into the classroom. In senior classes it can be a challenge to make math fun for students but I can tell you that these two activities had an entire class of adult learners completely excited about playing games.

The first activity presented by my colleague was "Deal or No Deal" for the Data Management course. In this activity student groups will be re-creating the Deal or No Deal game show and like the premise of the show they will calculate their probability of receiving an enticing offer from the banker. There was a lot of prep work done by the teacher. In each group is provided with a bristol board of cases, offer cards and 3 handouts for calculations, reflection questions and to outline the rules. After students chose the specified number of cases they were given an offer from the banker and the they to calculate probabilities of the having a case with a value greater than and less than the offer. Based on these probabilities students would either make a Deal or No Deal.  Overall I thought this was a very fun and useful way of practicing basic probability. For future use I would try to experiment with ways I can transfer some of the game components to an online version. One way I can already see working is playing this as a class and having the case board on one PowerPoint.

The next fun activity was a classic game of "Dominoes" and the activity was geared towards a Grade 12 Advanced Functions class so the faces on the Dominoes were Logarithms. Personally I had never played Dominoes before but it is very easy and for math people very addictive to make a match. This was an excellent way for students to practice their log laws. My colleague explained that in her class she actually used this as a warm up activity after just teaching the log laws but it can also be used later for review. Also, each time they play students can assess how they are progressing in their knowledge of log laws by tracking how much time it takes them to convert the logs to a single value. This activity can be adapted to almost every math course, instead of logs you can have equations in different forms, trig equations and angles, and solving for x.    

Grade 11 Functions

Grade 11 Functions is always a tough course for students whether students go from 10 academic to 11 University or 10 academic to 11 U/C the grade 11 curriculum does have a jump in the learning. Students in grade 11 will learn new/larger concepts and are required to practice through a range of application questions. One of the main new concepts in the grade 11 curriculum is exponential functions. This week one of my colleagues presented an activity to be used as an introductory lesson to exponential functions for a university level class. In this activity there were three stations created where each presented a problem that could be modeled by an exponential growth function. Being an introductory lesson the students are unaware of exponential growth applications or how exponential functions are represented. Thus students use existing mathematical knowledge and strategies to solve for the questions provided at each station. I really enjoyed the specific application questions my colleague had created for the students which were all very engaging and related to the interests of high school students. Examples included zombie apocalypse rate, ice bucket challenge and number of folds on a paper. For the first two stations, in order to solve for the number of people (infected or involed in the challenge) after x many days, there were counting chips provided. This helped the students visualize that there was a growth occurring however it was not linear or quadratic like they had already seen. The other station provided physical sheets of paper  for the students to fold and record the squares created after each fold. Overall this activity was very useful as an introduction as it forced students to not only apply previous knowledge but also use critical thinking to lead them to exponential functions. Although this was created for university level class I see it also being useful in a university/college level class.

   

Grade 9 Applied Lessons

CBR Motion Detector, Scientific Calculator,
Graph Worksheet

        The old saying goes.."You learn something new everyday" well today I learned something new in regards to technology used for math lessons. My colleague taught a lesson created for Grade 9 Applied class and she used a CBR. If you are like me you are thinking what the heck is that! Well it is a motion detector that connects to a scientific calculator which will display your motion in a graph. This was an introductory lesson to Rates of Change and I think it was a perfect activity to form a students understanding exactly what rate of change means. The package provided to each student clearly explained the steps for setting up the CBR and Calculator. Then the students were provided with 6 separate graphs and had to experiment with their motion patterns read by the CBR in order to re-create the graphs. This helped the students understand the difference between direction and speed. The next worksheet solidified their understanding of the same factors of a graph however they had to work in the reverse order. Thistime the motion of each graph was provided in words and students had to draw the graph based on the description. Now that the students comprehend the meaning of the graph, the teacher incorporated the rate of change formula and had the students calculate rise/run from the graph. I really enjoyed this activity and found the teaching order of the concept to be very effective. The CBR was an excellent tool to use and since this is actually an old piece of technology as is the scientific calculator, we had discussed whether they would create a connector that goes from the CBR to an iPad and the students can use the app for TI-83 or if eventually they create an app that records the motion and displays the graph.

         The other lesson of the night I wanted to share was a fun activity helping students solve for a variable x in an equation. To do this simple activity in your class all you need is mini whiteboards and whiteboard markers or if  you don't have mini whiteboards my colleague made a creative substitution by using clear document sleeves. After placing your students in groups of 4, you provide the entire class with an equation to solve and within each group a student will begin solving by writing down the first step. After the first step is done the student will pass on the whiteboard to the next student in the group who will complete the next step. This will continue until the group has isolated for the variable. what is excellent about this activity is that students have the opportunity to learn from their peers. If a mistake is made in one of the steps the next person will hopefully catch it and help the previous person fix it. This activity can be one of those fun math days especially when you make it a competition and the first group to correctly finish the equation will get a prize. I would definitely do this in my class because it achieves the same goal as providing the students with worksheets on worksheets of equations however it adds that element of excitement.