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.