Background:
On June 15th, my Grade 9 class and I hosted our second annual math fair. What started out as a small idea has grown into a capstone event of their semester. This year, we had 330 elementary school students visit our building to take part in the fair’s activities. Several people (following the hashtag #TDCMathFair2016) commented that they would like to do similar things with their student transitions. This post details the rationale behind the event, how we structured it, what stations we had, and feedback/advice from our exploits.
Category: stations
Categories
Relation Stations
This semester I desperately wanted to improve how I taught linear relations to Grade 9 students. I had tried some interesting activities in the past, but lost patience and ended up drilling them with notation and algorithms. I wanted to find a way to show the students that equations were just explanations of patterns. I began compiling different linear patterns and dug in for the long haul.
I stumbled upon a collection of abandoned, square tiles and decided to use them to put students in the center of the pattern making.
One of the coolest experiences in my university training was the opportunity to invite a kindergarten class into our mathematics methods class for a mathematical field trip. Our class was divided into groups of three or four and were given the task of designing a mathematical activity that the students would try. The afternoon was a hit. Each group set up shop around the room and the kids freely moved from station to station as they mastered each activity.
Somewhere along the way, mathematics becomes formalized and stationary. I imagine it is around the time of fractions. I assume this for no better reason than teachers and students alike seem to blame most of their problems on fractions. That is until Grade 10, when polynomial factoring squeezes out fractions as the most hated mathematical procedure.