Grade Nine Academic Learning Activities

Hello everyone,

This week in EDBE 8F83 we focused on learning activities that were aimed at Grade Nine Academic classes. That being said, I believe that these activities could be modified to function in many different math classrooms.

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The first presentation that I really enjoyed was Melissa's Speed Dating and Equation Making activity. This activity was set up like a typical Speed Dating session would be set up; pairs of people facing each other. Each person had one classmate sitting across from them. Each student was given a handout sheet with space to write the name of each partner you meet. The students on the inside were given a y-intercept and the students on the outside were given a slope. Each time there was a rotation, the students were required to use the information they had between the two of them to create an equation of a line and graph that line. The fun part came after the students had graphed the line. If the line that was created went through a red heart, that meant that your partner was your "Match". I found this incredibly fun and it almost took the pressure of the math off. I think this would be a great activity for grade nines because it is more of a game that includes math, rather then math that is kind of a game. Additionally, as Melissa suggested, I think that this activity format could be used in different classes as well. It could be used in a Grade ten class for quadratics, a Grade 11 class for sinusoidal functions, or a Grade 12 class for more advanced functions.  I also really enjoyed that the students were getting up out of their seats and moving around. This is an activity that I will 100% be using in my future classroom.

The second activity that I enjoyed was presented my two of my colleagues, Bevan and Lindsey. These were two separate presentations, but they both did the same topic. What was interesting to see was the different styles of teaching that could be used when teaching just one topic.

For Lindsey's presentation she used a Lab Format, in which she gave students many different materials and asked them to investigate the formula for the Sum of the Angles of a Polygon. This was a great activity to see how students explore and collaborate with each other. I enjoyed having the freedom to solve the problem whichever way I wanted to. This is great for students because not every student is going to solve it the exact same way. I appreciated that this activity gave students that freedom.

For Bevan's presentation he used a more Guided Format to present the Sum of the Angles of a Polygon. He took as through the investigation process as a class. We started with drawing triangles within the polygons. We were instructed to create the smallest number of triangles that we could. Following this part, we flipped our sheets over and started filling out a chart to investigate the sum of the angles. I thought is activity would be great for an applied class or a class that typically needs a little more guidance.

I really enjoyed seeing the difference between these two activities. It really shows that depending on the nature of your class, the instruction needs to change. This is known in the education world as Differentiated Instruction, or commonly known as DI. DI can be defined as "effective instruction that is responsive to students’ readiness, interests and learning preferences". By knowing your students and how they learn, you can choose an appropriate instruction style. This instruction style could be one of the three that we saw this week or something completely different. It all depends on how your students learn best.