MPM1D1 - Day 7 Mastery Test, Variation & Slope

I've never done three Visual Patterns in one week, but they seemed to tie in nicely with what we were doing this week. A couple of days ago we did this one:

Then yesterday we did this one:

Today we did this one:

All groups found the equation and the number of squares in the forty-third step easily. I wanted to show this one because we talking about direct and partial variation. We talked about how many squares the 0th step would have. We discussed what the graphs of the three patterns would look like (number of squares vs. step number) and connected an initial value of 0 to direct variations. We also talked about what was the same in all four tables and all four graphs. Somebody mentioned that the values in all the tables were going up by the same amount. Almost all groups had created a column for the first differences, even though we've never talked about it. Somebody else realized that the graphs would be going up at the same angle. We took a few minutes to get some information about direct and partial variations along with some information about slope into their notes.

I was happy to get through this when I did. Today was picture day and shortly after I finished about half a dozen students had to leave and get their photos taken.

The rest of the class did a mastery test on integers. Our department uses mastery tests to get at key skills in a course. They are short ten mark quizzes that focus on very specific but important skills. The idea is that we write the mastery test in class. The teacher marks them then hands them back (usually the next day) and go over any trouble spots. We rewrite a similar mastery test which get marked again. After the second attempt students can rewrite as many times as they want (outside of class time) until they get a mark that they are happy with. In this way the assessment is formative until the student decides it should be summative.

We finished up the mastery test and I handed out a set of data and asked them to create a scatter plot. They had to choose which variables were dependent and independent, create a scale, draw a line of best fit and list the characteristics of the graph (discrete/continuous, partial/direct, positive/negative slope).