MPM1D1 - Day 75 Snow Day

The buses were cancelled today and as a result I had very few students show up. I did have one girl email me to see if she could write her test today. She came, got some help with a few things and wrote her test. Good for her.

I did have a number of struggling students request some extra work to do over the holidays. I was impressed with their desire to improve. So I sent them some work.

MPM1D1 - Day 74 Test Review

We started today by looking at these two objects that were printed yesterday.

The goal was to consolidate some of yesterday's work and to reinforce one of yesterday's big ideas. Because of the work my students had done with their pentominoes, they knew that each pentomino was made up of five cubes. The cubes on the small pentominoes were 0.5 cm in all direction and the cubes on the large one were 1 cm in all directions. So, I asked how many times bigger the volume of the larger one was compared to the smaller. I received a couple of answers of 2 (which I expected), an answer of 4 (with the justification that that's what they found yesterday) and an answer of 8. I held the figures up and asked if anyone thought it would only take two of the little ones to fit into the bigger one. Strictly by intuition everyone knew that 2 couldn't be the answer. One student offered up an explanation of doubling in more than one dimension. At this point we jumped into a bit of algebra and looked at an expression for the volume of a cube that was x units long and compared that expression to one for a cube that had a length of 2x.

The large figure in the picture is a model of an original that is twice the size, in all dimensions. I asked how many of the little ones would fit in the giant one.

There was some discussion about 16 vs. 64, but eventually we settled on 64 (supported with some algebra). Once the relationship for volume was squared away we quickly touched on the relationship for surface area.

It was a good, fun discussion that I think made a lot of sense because of the manipulatives on hand, that were made by the students.

After the warm-up we wrote a mastery test on equations of lines then students continued working on the review for their test tomorrow.

MPM1D1 - Day 73 Finishing Up 3D Printing

Today we picked up right where we left off yesterday with the pentomino activity. We fired up the 3D printer and started printing right away. Groups that hadn't finished the calculations from yesterday kept working away. They stumbled a little with the different units but eventually most of the groups figured things out. We printed one figure after another but eventually ran out of time. I'll get the others printed at some point.

Once groups were done I gave a review for them to work on to prepare for this week's test. I was hoping to do the test Thursday, but after things didn't go well yesterday I figured they would need an extra day. So, yes we are having a test on the last day before the holidays. It's not ideal, but I figure it's better than doing the test Thursday or after the holidays.

Generally, most students worked well today, either on the pentominoes assignment or the review. There was also a fair bit of excitement when a group's pentomino began printing.

During the printing process today I remembered that prints were not solid plastic. They are infilled with either a hexagonal pattern or a rectilinear pattern. I'll have to do some research to see what percentage we were infilling. This actually adds another layer to the assignment. The more I think about it, the more I think this activity would make a great culminating activity.

MPM1D1 - Day 72 Surface Area, Volume & 3D Printing

I had seven students away yesterday so I spent some time at the beginning of the period recapping what we did yesterday. Once the recap was done we moved right into some volume and surface area.

My own kids have a pentomino based game called Katamino. It's a fun game that really stretches your spatial reasoning skills.

I thought it would be fun to make this game the basis for an assignment. If you don't have the game you could always modify the assignment to work with any pentominoes or even have students build their own figures using linking cubes.

The gist of the lesson is that students get a pentonmino and calculate its surface area and volume. Then they create a scale diagram of a pentomino that is half the size (in all dimensions) of their original pentomino. They calculate the surface area and volume of their model and make note of the relationship between the original and the half-sized model.

They were given the length of a spool of filament (in metres), the diameter of the filament (in millimetres) and the cost of the spool and they needed to determine the cost of their pentomino. Once they had done all of that they designed their pentomino in TinkerCAD. The designing was pretty simple and didn't take long at all. Once their design was complete they were able to print on the 3D printer.

This was meant to be a bit of a fun lesson but for whatever reason many students didn't seem to be into it. I had students working in pairs which is not something we normally do. They also weren't working at the board. Some students spent a lot of time fidgeting with the pentomino (I thought fidget spinners were so last year?), others watched as their partner did the work. One group took 30 minutes just to get their measurements, despite repeated calls to get going. I think next time I need to get groups to do their work at the whiteboards and maybe I need to be explicit about how they could split up their work. Maybe groups of three would have been better than pairs. I'll have to rethink the logistics of this one.

Having said that I had two groups print today. They did a great job and were pretty excited about the result. I had one more group that finished everything except for the printing at lunch. They will print first thing tomorrow. We will finish up tomorrow. I'm looking forward to trying this again to see how it goes.

Here's a description of the task. This task could also be used in an MFM2P class. I've also modified the task to fit the MBF3C course. You can find that here. Here is a link to a quick introduction to TinkerCAD.

MPM1D1 - Day 71 Rearranging Formulas

We started today practicing solving equations with fractions as groups at the whiteboards. Here we the warm-up questions.

There weren't any problems with the first question. There were a couple of problems with the second one and more problems with the third. We spent some time working through the issues. Some groups wanted more questions to practice with so I had them make up their own and go from there.

Once everyone seemed comfortable solving these equations we moved on to rearranging formulas. I posted a few on the board and let them get to work. Here are the questions they started with.

The most challenging one here seemed to be part c. For groups that struggled I gave them an example where y, m and b were given and asked them to solve for x. They had no trouble doing so, so I asked them to replace the numbers with variables. That seemed to be enough to get them going.

Once groups were done I gave them some questions to practice.

MPM1D1 - Day 70 Equations of Parallel and Perpendicular Lines

During yesterday's warm-up, one group was convinced that two of the lines were perpendicular. Based on that comment I thought today's warm-up should be about perpendicular lines.

Once groups found equations for the lines I asked what they knew about how the lines intersected. They responded with the point of intersection and I asked if there was anything else. When they told me that the lines were perpendicular I asked how they knew the lines were perpendicular. Some groups could justify their claim immediately, while others need time to formulate their ideas.  

After the warm-up we moved right into finding equations of parallel and perpendicular lines. We had a conversation to remind them about how to find the equation of a line given two points and what it means for lines to be parallel or perpendicular. They worked on these problems at the board:

None of the groups had any trouble with the first two questions. A couple of groups struggled with the third and all groups needed some reminders about rearranging equations for the last question. When they were finished they went to work on some practice questions.

MPM1D1 - Day 69 Properties of Quadrilaterals

The warm-up for today was to find the equation of the line segments shown below.

I figured this would be a good opportunity to practice dealing with horizontal lines, as well as others. One group tried using the formula for slope but when I asked if there was an easier way they told me that they could use the graph. Another group was convinced that the two segments on the right were perpendicular. When I asked if they could explain how they knew this was true, they began doubting themselves and then verified that they were in fact wrong by looking at the slopes of each.

The goal for today was to investigate properties of quadrilaterals. I found this Geogebra activity. I had originally thought that I would make something up but finding this saved me some time.. Students worked through the activity at their own pace and took notes about what they observed. Some notes were better than others. I had students working individually on their own computers. I'm thinking it may have been better to have them working in pairs.

Once most students were done I summarized with this graphic:

Then it was time for some practice. I gave these questions from this page. Some students chose to work in groups at the board, some chose to work in groups at their desks and some chose to work individually. The two strongest students, who hated working with each other earlier in the semester, decided to team up along with a third person because they realized they could get the work done faster if they worked together. They stayed in past the bell and got it done.