Senior Mathematics Activities

The activity that I presented to the class was an introductory lesson on exponential functions that is meant to be for a grade 11 university course. I put students into groups of about 4 or 5 people and set up three different stations around the classroom. The first station was about a zombie attack within the city that was spreading at a rate of four new zombies every day. The second station was about folding a piece of paper and counting the amount of sections that it created. The third station was about the ice bucket challenge, where each person that was nominated would nominate three more people to complete the challenge. Each group was given about five minutes at each station before we would rotate to the next station as a class. There were red counters (at the zombie station) and blue counters (at the ice bucket station) to allow the students to visualize how the zombie attack or the ice bucket challenge was spreading. I believe the counters worked very well because it was an easy way to picture how the numbers were increasing. All of these scenarios represent exponential functions, therefore, the students were able to see how exponential functions are used in real-world (expect for the zombies!) situations. Some groups were confused by the wording at some stations, therefore, I plan to ensure that more thorough instructions are placed at each station in the future. With that being said, all of the students seemed very engaged throughout this activity and I plan to use this activity in my future classroom. 

The Ambiguous Case of the Law of Sines

Another activity that was presented was about triangle properties. We were given three strips of paper that were either fully attached (stapled) or movable (on a brass fastener). The strips of paper were also either cut off straight or in the shape of an arrow which meant that the length could be changed. I thought that this could be an excellent way to demonstrate the ambiguous case to students. During an observation day in my last placement, my associate was teaching a lesson on the ambiguous case of triangles and it was clear that many students were confused. These triangles would be the perfect way to demonstrate the ambiguous case because it is a visual representation of both triangles. As you can see in the picture above, if you move the yellow piece of paper, two triangles will be formed. I plan to recreate something like this in the future when teaching students about the ambiguous case triangle.