War with Radians

A little review of radians and a review of the special triangles from last year only this year with radians.

 

Experiencing Radians with a Ruler

Students were given the following to do.

1.    Work in pairs.  Pick up 1 piece of cardboard, a circle template, 1 piece of paper tape (about 1 meter in length), and a pair of scissors.     

2.    Cut out a perfect circle.  Wrap the tape around the circle.  Allow the tape to overlap.  Your partner will now cut through the overlap section with the scissors so that the ends just meet.   
       Question:  What measurement of the circle does this cut length of tape represent?                       _
3.    Fold the cardboard circle in four equal sections by folding in half, then in half again. 

Whiteboarding Review

Students were put in visible random groupings and worked on vertical non permanent surfaces. The goal was to review concepts that we had seen in the activities in the course to date.

The first question asked them to list all characteristics of this piecewise graph.

Transformations of Functions

Students were put in visible random groups of three alphabetically by first name. They brainstormed all the transformations they could remember and filled in a chart with three columns.
1) a description of the transformation
2) the function mapping f(x) --->
3) the ordered pair mapping (x,y) --->

We consolidated this as a class.

Marble Paint Rolls and the Graphing Calculator

Students were put in random groups of three and were required to practise marble rolls until they could create a function with opposite end behaviour ( a cubic) and a function with the same end behaviour ( a quartic). Once they mastered it they put paint on their marble and made two marble paint rolls. Once it dried they went over it with a marker. They look like this.

Camping with Ms. Frizzle

Here was the task.
Going to Camp

 

The senior class is planning a wellness summer camp for two weeks.  The bus fare costs $500 and the cost is $275 per person for the two weeks.

 

Generate an equation for the total cost for the trip if n people are attending.

 

If everyone is going to share the costs equally then generate an equation for the cost per person if n people are attending.

 

Now if 8 people that want to attend cannot (because they cannot afford it) and the rest of the group decides to pay for them by splitting the extra costs equally. Generate an equation for the cost per person.

 

Create a table and sketch the graph for the last scenario.

State all of the following characteristics for the function in the last scenario: X Intercepts

Roots Zeros, Y Intercept, Domain, Range, End Behaviour, Maximum / Minimum Point(s), Intervals of increase, Intervals of decrease, Intervals of concave up, Intervals of concave down, Inflection Point(s), Asymptotes

Here is the student work:



 

Here is the task:

Shape rolling                                 

Introduction to the activity:

In this activity you are going to investigate the rolling of a geometric shape.  You will cut out a shape and poke a hole in the shape.  With your pencil in the hole, “roll” the shape along a straight edge at the bottom of your chart paper.

Overwijkitis

Here was the task.

Sept 11, 2014 BREAKING NEWS: Overwijkitis Virus Loose at Glebe

Strange behaviour at Carleton University last week has been linked to a new virus, called Overwijkitis, being researched in university labs.  University officials are strongly advising that students remain in their homes and away from anyone who may be infected.  Those who have been infected can be distinguished from others by a distinct red mark on their hands.  Anyone with these red marks is infected.

Zombies infect one other person per day in order to stay alive.  It is expected that the virus will spread next to neighboring towns and cities.

Characteristics and Speed Dating

What is a function?

 

 

Characteristics of functions.

Show One, Bury One

In this activity students were put in groups of 3 randomly. They were shown the sequence of cards on top A, 5, 2, 4, 3 on the bottom. Then I unloaded them show one (flip it over), bury one (put it on the bottom), show one, bury one until the 5 cards are unloaded. They come out in order A, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Students then went to their groups and white boards and tried to figure out the order for

Finding Time for the Mathematical Processes

In Ontario there are 7 mathematical processes that you can read about here. In a nutshell they are:

Problem solving, reasoning and proving, reflecting, selecting tools and computational strategies, connecting, representing and communication.

Finding the time to focus on these process expectations versus the curriculum expectations in our courses is challenging but I would say the processes should be our priority.

I recently huddled my class in the centre of the room and told them at noon the hour hand and the minute hand were at the same place. I then asked them to find all the times over the next 12 hours that the hands would be at the same place.

Ten questions for students - One question for Mr. O

On day one I put 10 questions on the white boards for the students to answer and allowed each group of three to ask me one question. Most groups thought about their question for a while. I had veto rights if I needed it. Here are the pictures of the whiteboards. Nice way for students and teacher to interact on the first day.

 

 

Welcome to MHF 4U Semester 1 201415

Hi everyone. This blog will be devoted to two sections of Grade 12 Advanced Functions at Glebe Collegiate Institute in Ottawa. Semester one 201415 year. This blog is intended to document our journey. Comments are welcomed from students, parents and others. Of course I will moderate the comments.

First and foremost I spent the last week of the summer preparing my room for Visible Random Groupings and Vertical Non Permanent Surfaces. You can read about these here.

Here are a few pictures of our environment for learning taken from the four corners of my room. In fact I used one of them for the background to this blog.                   

I am very happy with how the room turned out. Of course here we are the second week of school finished and I am not finished with the details of the room yet.

The curriculum document for this course can be found here.

There are 4 strands