MFM2P - Day 5 2015 (More Linear Relations)

Today's warm up was a Balance Bender:

Here is what they did with it:

Some students had worked it out incorrectly and shown no work. This was a great opportunity for me to impress upon them the value of writing down their thinking. I chose not to translate this into equations as I want to focus on the success of the warm ups, not turn them into what they consider algebra. (Some think algebra isn't fun - ha!)

They spent the rest of the period working on the linear relations handout and I circulated, helping and encouraging as needed. It becomes apparent when working on something like this, how disconnected some students find "math" from "the real world". The contexts are nothing thrilling to be sure, but when students can explain to me what is going on, such as: "They have to pay $200 even if no one shows up and it costs $10 per person" but then tell me they have no idea what they are doing when asked the y-intercept (cost-intercept) and slope, there is definitely a disconnect. My goal today was to make them more aware of how much they can do. I also wanted to show them how I would like them to be able to write their solutions by the end of the semester. It's important to value the great mathematical thinking they are already doing while at the same time I need to encourage them to make their thinking visible, understandable and mathematically correct.

After they had all finished at least the first page, we consolidated:

We went through the questions on the 2nd page, mainly to highlight the connections between the scenario presented and the mathematics we are working on.

I am very impressed with my group so far. Next week we move on to quadratics!