Grade 11/12 University Learning Leading Activities Reflection

Hello everyone and welcome back to my third blog for this semester!

For the last two classes, we had two more leading learning activity presentations, where my colleagues both did a presentation on resources for grade 11 and 12 university mathematics, including both functions strands, data management and calculus and vectors. It was interesting to see how to take a university preparation course and find different ways to make math engaging! We have only had leading learning activity presentations on both academic and applied grade 9/10 mathematics. Therefore, it was a good learning experience to expand my tool box with ways to integrate both motivating and engaging activities and include technology to learn mathematical concepts in all strands of grade 11 and 12 mathematics. 

The first presentation day included two different activities that covered grade 11 and 12 university preparation functions. The first activity was for MHF4U, grade 12 advanced functions jeopardy. This game is extremely useful to use in my future classroom, as it is a way to make reviewing for a test, quiz, exam or summary of units in a fun engaging way through collaboration. The class was split up into 3 teams of 4-5 people each. I liked the way that the class was split up into groups to encourage collaboration in small groups. The jeopardy game can have up to 16 teams! Therefore this technology game encourages students to work together to solve the math problems. Below is an image of the jeopardy screen including 5 different subsections of the functions unit. This jeopardy activity that was presented was pre-made on their website and I believe it would be more beneficial to create your own jeopardy to ensure that all of the questions are covered in the Ontario curriculum as our class thought some of the questions were too easy and not covered in grade 12 functions. The jeopardy game can contribute to oral communication and the game has a scoring board which then can keep track of what teams are the most successful and gauge the understanding of students’ knowledge. The jeopardy game can also be used as a diagnostic assessment tool to gauge the understanding of where students are at the beginning of the year, transitioning from grade 11 university preparation mathematics.  Below is also an example of “Graphs for 400” and what the sample question entails. Overall, I would use jeopardy games in my future classroom, as I believe they are a good learning tool to engage all students. 

The second activity was also for MCR 3U, grade 11 advanced functions. This student also used technology which was very similar, but better, than Kahoot. He used www.socrative.com. This website is an extremely useful learning tool as it is easily accessible and students can use their phones, computers or anything connected to internet. The website is useful for testing student knowledge and gauging an understanding of where your students are with multiple choice and long or short answer questions that are answered in real time as a class, but done individually. There are many indicators of student learning, and why it is an effective activity. Socrative, ensures that the students are actively contributing, has room for debriefing each question as a whole and there can be feedback implemented into your quiz. Additionally, it can be used as multiple ways of assessment OF, AS and FOR learning for conversations, observations, products or even diagnostic assessments. Therefore, there is a wide range of ways to modify the way you implement this technology into the classroom.

The second presentation included activities for data management and calculus and vectors. The first activity was for calculus and vectors which integrated the concept of coding. This activity was shocking to me as I have never been exposed to coding and how difficult it is. My classmate made his own coding game, that involved vectors and he wanted the class to “make their favorite game” via scratch. Below in an image of the game he used for the vectors strand. It was an engaging way to test our knowledge of vector addition. Then he gave us the opportunity to use Scratch to try and develop our own game that uses any curriculum expectation of either calculus or vectors. Therefore, this concept can be easily integrated into any math classroom as an innovative way for a rich performance task, used as a final summative assessment. 

The second activity for this presentation was using cards to explore probability taught in the data management strand. This activity included students using many of the mathematical processes such as problem solving, reasoning and proving, reflecting and connecting. The materials needed for this activity are the provided worksheets and a deck of cards! The aim of the activity was simple, easy to follow and an engaging way to teach basic concepts of probability using a hands on activity. I believe using a deck of cards is a good way to teach probability or to introduce the topic to get students thinking of odds using a tool in which they are familiar with. 

In our class, we have been reading the textbook “Thinking Mathematically” by J. Mason, L. Burton and K. Stacey. The chapter for this week involved the topic of “Conjecturing.” The authors think of conjecturing as a cyclic process (shown below), where I believe any of these leading learning activities can include the process of conjecturing as a lot of the activities are open ended.  Conjecturing involves steps to take to solve a question. It focuses on learning from your mistakes, building on your prior knowledge and thinking creatively (Mason, Burton & Stacey 2010). Overall, all of the activities that were introduced in these last two presentations have raised awareness in multiple ways that I can implement engaging, motivating and fun activities into my future mathematics classroom. 

References

Mason, J., Burton, L., & Stacey, K. (2010). Thinking mathematically. London ; Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., c2010