Reflection: Representations of Relations

The one thing I am really nervous about when starting this new school year is the bell schedule, 35 minutes for one period. What can I get done in 35 minutes? Can I get a Desmos activity done in 35 minutes? Could we do a class project in 35 minutes? I feel like I will be cutting out important discussions or big "ah-ha" moments with less time.

So I went back to thinking about when I start the second day of class with mathematics, I want there to be context in what the students see and do in math. In my last post about Representations of Relations I received this comment:



They changed the focus of that first lesson to make the rest of the year one cohesive goal.



As part of the curriculum group for Advanced Algebra, we set the pacing guide and decided that representations of relations along with the distributive property should be taught first. One thing I want to get across to students that first week is everyone having their voices heard and problem solving.

So each wall of the classroom will have the same layout from the previous post,

• one wall will have ordered pair along with a piece of butcher paper with notice/wonder at the top. 
• second wall will have a mapping with a different piece of butcher paper with notice/wonder.
• third wall will have a table with butcher paper labeled the same way.
• fourth wall will have the New York Times graph and butcher paper.

I want to have students stand (and gather by the board) and take 1 minute to look and 2 minutes to discuss with a partner what they see. I will ask what students notice first, then wonder. At the end I want them to discuss what was similar or different with the four different relations.

I still have to cover distributive property at the end, but as an exit ticket I want them to reflect on the experience and answer the following question:

Why did the New York Times select a graph to represent this relation?  

I want a connection more to relations, what question should I ask that encompasses what they learned and that representing functions is useful?

"The Grasshopper and the Ant" teach Exponents

What do you notice, what do you wonder when you see this image?

It looks cold, how do you know which one is the ant? Which one is the grasshopper? Which one looks warmer? How do you think the discussion is going?

Next have the students read the fable that is associated with it:

A Grasshopper gay Sang the summer away,
And found herself poor By the winter's first roar.
Of meat or of bread, Not a morsel she had!
So a begging she went, To her neighbour the ant,
For the loan of some wheat, Which would serve her to eat,
Till the season came round. "I will pay you," she saith,
"On an animal's faith, Double weight in the pound
Ere the harvest be bound." The ant is a friend
(And here she might mend) Little given to lend.
"How spent you the summer?" Quoth she, looking shame
At the borrowing dame. "Night and day to each comer
I sang, if you please." "You sang! I'm at ease;
For 'tis plain at a glance, Now, ma'am, you must dance."

What do you notice? What do you wonder now?

Where math comes in to play is the idea of where the grasshopper says, "I will pay you, she saith,

On an animal's faith, Double weight in the ." When you can't afford something say, the full price of a car, how do you afford it?  Most students will talk about saving money or a loan. If the grasshopper wants to survive, she wants a cut of the ants food savings and next season the grasshopper will give double back. Ask your students is this fair? Is this how a bank works?

There is a way to calculate it mathematically, but right now I want students getting use to the idea of exponents. The equation I would have them use is the compound interest equation.

A=P(1+r/n)^(nt)

Where A is the amount
P is the principle
r is the interest rate
n is the number of times it is compounded per year
t is the time in years.

I would have students think about what each of them means and how the rate effects how much the grasshopper would way in the long run.

Temperature Drop Pre-Eclipse

I wanted to start the day with a Notice/Wonder introduction. So I asked students to discuss what they think would happen during the eclipse. Students shared somethings they picked up in other classes about nocturnal animals becoming away, lightning bugs might show up, and that we might be able to see stars.

My next question focused particularlly on the temperature and asked what did they think the temperature would do during the eclipse? Students discussed in groups some of my favorites:

"How close would it be to a really cloudy day?"

"Would the temperature drop more than ten degrees?"

"Would the street lights come on outside of school?"

I gave them a piece of graph paper and asked them to put temperature on the y-axis and time on the x-axis. I told them they could use their iPads and any resources they needed to answer the question and discuss in their groups. They had ten minutes to come up with a graph and post it on the wall.

Then I showed them this graphic from the 2001 eclipse in Africa.


I asked them how it would be different, how it would be the same as the eclipse on Monday. I described the activity we were going to be doing Monday and the layout of the day.

Since some of the students had questions about the eclipse, we watched this 5 minute really well done video by Vox.

Then we went outside and tried on a pair of solar glasses to see how they fit and what the sun looks like. Some students even got their camera's on their phone to take a very blurry picture.