Thursday 19 January 2017

Spiralled MPM2D Update

This semester I taught two sections of grade 10 academic math, both of which I spiralled. Although I have taught this course for many years, this was my second time spiralling it. I blogged my way though last year's journey, starting here. I thought it might be worth sharing what I did this time around as the changes resulted from my reflections the first time through the course.

The one big change was doing more quadratics earlier in the course. About half the course is quadratics so I tried to devote about half of each cycle to quadratics. We factored starting in cycle 1; the rationale being that factoring doesn't always stick so multiple exposures to it (and lots of practice) should help students better retain how to factor.

Cycle 1:

Cycle 2:

Cycle 3:

Not-really-a-cycle Cycle 4:

We managed to finish the content on December 22 so when we returned from the break there was a sufficient amount of time to review each strand and have an optional test for each strand. These tests covered 9 of the 10 curriculum expectations and each expectation was optional. Each student could choose which expectation they wanted to show - some did none while others did all 9.

I modified some of the homework sets from last year, but continued to spiral the homework as well. I tailored it to include questions that I know many students needed to practice, but always kept it to one page.

I'm sure there were other differences that I cannot recall at the moment. If you have questions I would be happy to answer them in the comments.

5 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for sharing this Mary. It has given me lots of ideas.

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    1. That's great to hear! Please let me know if I can help...

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  2. Like your thoughts on spiraling 2D. I spiraled 3M(well for most part) for the first time and would like continue doing it as it helps students not forget the concepts learned in the beginning, in particular.

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  3. Thanks for sharing! I see your quizzes and tests but are you also evaluating assignments or other work in between?

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  4. Hi Mary,
    you are a goddess. I don't know how you have time to post all these wonderful materials but I am very grateful as I am using your MFM2P1 spiralling materials to begin the process of spiralling as well. This is a new initiative in the school and I am the first teacher to attempt it, but the only reason I took it on is that I could follow what you have done and modify it as needed. Thank you for making your work available. Could you possibly email me an example of what your assessments look like? I imagine multi step, multi level questions in several categories and a checklist to track which student has achieved which specific expectation. Then I guess those who need to can attempt to prove attainment of specific skills on future assessments. Maybe I'm over complicating things. Thanks in advance
    Veronika
    veronika.nemes@tdsb.on.ca

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