MPM1D1 - Day 81 Multiple Choice Practice

 I was pleasantly surprised today to see that a number of students had attempted some of the practice multiple choice question that I had sent to them on Friday.

I had them start in groups working at the board on a few multi-step multiple choice questions. Here they are: 

 

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The reason for starting with these questions was to get students to realize that just because it's a multiple choice question doesn't mean that it's easy. I wanted them to see that there could still be multiple steps involved.

Once they were finished the warm-up questions they could choose to work on the Opens Response questions from the other day or to practice the multiple choice quizzes in D2L. Most students chose to complete the online quizzes but a few worked on the open response questions. I think my favourite part about this time of year is watching students help each gain a better understanding of the content. There seems to be so much transferring of knowledge. It's exciting to watch.

MPM1D1 - Day 76 EQAO Practice & Review

I struggled a little with what to do on the first day back after the holidays. We were supposed to write a test the day before the holidays but the buses were cancelled. Writing the test on the first day back after two weeks off would be a bad idea. I wanted students to review but I figured if I let them study on their own that the period might not be that productive.

As much as I wanted to get started right away a number of students had lots of questions. Questions about when our test would be, the details about the EQAO test as well as questions about the exam. I spent way too long talking about what the next couple of weeks look like and then we got to work.

The warm-up, at the boards in groups, was this visual pattern:

I asked them to find an equation for the volume of the n^th term. Once they had finished that they were to do the same but for the surface area. I was very pleased at how quickly the groups got to work and how well they were able to get a solution and explain it. It seems that they haven't forgotten much over the holidays.

After the warm-up they worked on the multiple-choice questions from last year's EQAO test (in groups at the board). This provided a good overview of much of the content that will appear on their final test of the year. There were some great discussions. It's nice to see them pull the course content together like this.

Most groups only made it about halfway through these questions so we'll finish them up tomorrow.

MPM1D1 - Day 41 & 42 Review For Cycle 2

I'm at the Ontario Teachers' Federation conference on Financial Literacy today and tomorrow. Hopefully my class was working on the review for their test next week. Most of this came from Denise Cowdry. Thanks Denise.

Monday I'll be away again. Peter Liljedahl is coming to our board. I'm really looking forward to hearing him talk about thinking classrooms. Hopefully my class will work on part 2 of the review for their test.

MPM1D1 Day 22 Review

Today was a day for students to work through a review package to prepare for their test tomorrow. Before they started I answered a bunch of questions about the test, such as "How long is it?" to which I gave my standard response "11 inches". I could have told them it was 8.5 inches wide but they didn't seem interested.

The room was just buzzing the entire period. Everyone was working on different things in different ways. Some students put their headphones on and worked on their own, others worked on problems but checked with a group member if they got stuck and a few worked on questions as a group. Some students started on the first question and worked through the questions in order while others focused on the content they felt least confident about. There were some great discussions and some excellent peer teaching. I'm hoping for good things tomorrow.

I offered to run an online tutorial tonight through Adobe Connect. As it turns out I didn't have anybody show up. I wonder if that's because they forgot, didn't need it or had technical difficulties. I was unable to login on my Windows machine but had no issues on my Mac or iPad. I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

Student Generated Test Review

I had a bit of extra time in my grade 9 class as my students had mostly finished the review they were working on before the end of the period.  As I thought about how I could fill the time, it occurred to me that my students had little experience in trying to figure out what was going to be on a test.

I decided that I would have them work in groups of 4 to come up with good questions for a test. In addition to a question they needed to work out a solution to their problem. I expected to get a lot of knowledge type questions (calculate, graph, etc.). I did get some of those questions but I also had some great thinking questions. I was very excited that some groups came up with 'how' or 'why' questions. Some of the questions were so good I wished that I hadn't made up the test yet. They would have made good test questions. We shared the questions with the class so that everyone could work on them. Perhaps next time I will have to give this type of work a little earlier in the unit and give students class time to work on solutions.

As a bonus, the activity forced students to work on their vocabulary. The questions had to be clear enough so that everyone understood.