Technomaths

Each semester, for your Term 2 and Term 4 reports, you are required to reflect on your Learning Goals and write about what you have achieved the previous semester. If you did not achieve your goals, you need to explain why you didn’t and how you can achieve those goals the following semester, if they are still relevant.

You are also required to write about your Future Learning Goals. I would like you to include:

• 3          Academic goals (Subject related eg. Maths, English, Science, PE, Art etc)
• 2          You Can Do It goals (Confidence, Persistence, Organisation, Resilience and Getting Along)
• 1          Personal goal (Out of school – helping at home, weekend sport, hobby etc) 

The third section of your report includes a teacher comment, which I will write once I receive your student comment and future learning goals. Please send these to me at my gmail address, either as an attachment or in the body of the message. Please do not format the text in any way as I need to copy and paste these comments and future learning goals directly into your report. Thanks for your speedy co-operation in this task.

Learning Intention: Students will understand that there are many different ways to express the concept of ‘part of a whole’.

Success criteria: Each student will produce a poster that demonstrates eight different ways to express a certain fraction, chosen by the distribution of individual fraction cards. We will use these cards and our ‘Fraction Walls’ to demonstrate adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions.

Each student will recieve a card with a fraction and create a poster that shows this fraction eight different ways (as above for one half). When you have finished, place your poster on the number line in the room.

The next task is to go to Mathletics and do the required tasks.

When you have finished, you  can go to the following sites:

BBC Skillswise – Fractions and Percentages

BBC Bitesize – Fractions, Decimals and Percentages

Interactive Maths Games and Activities

Five Fraction activities and two Percentages activities at the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives

**Important – Please leave a comment below about what you have learnt about fractions, decimals and percentages over the past three weeks this term.

Learning Intention: This lesson we will be using three different apps on the iPads to learn about the value of fractions, decimals and percentages.

Success Criteria: Students will understand the value of common fractions (1/2, 3/4, 1/3, 2/3 etc) and be able to order a list of common fractions, decimals and percentages.

1. Motion Math HD – Bounce the fraction ball at the corresponding point on the number line by moving the iPad (10 minutes).

2. Fraction Factory – Move the factory cog to the correct point on the number line (10 minutes).

3. Number Line – Order the fractions, decimals and percentages from smallest to largest (10 minutes).

Please leave a comment below about which app you liked best, why you liked it and what you learnt.

Today we completed an exercise where you needed to circle the decimal number with the highest value. Some of you found this really easy and have an excellent understanding of decimal place value. Some students will need to work on this skill by following the links below and completing the interactive activities on those two sites. Just remember that you can add as many zeros to the last digit of a decimal number and it does not change the value of that decimal.

Decimal Place Value at AAAMath

Pre-Algebra lessons at CoolMath

Image Source

Today we are going to use Erastothene’s Sieve to find the prime numbers up to 100. You will use the “Count By” app on the iPods or iPads or your netbook with the interactive 100 chart program. Color in the corresponding numbers on your paper 100 chart.

Prime numbers are numbers with exactly two factors – you can divide a prime number by one or itself, but no other number, to get a whole number. The number one only has one factor, so it is not a prime number. So, 2 and 3 are the first two prime numbers. 4 is not a prime number because it has three factors (1, 2 and 4). Circle the prime numbers on your paper chart and stick it firmly in your work book to refer to later.

Welcome to our five new students from other primary schools and welcome back to the Year 7 class of 2012. This year we will use several different resources to support our maths learning:

• Your Oxford Big Ideas text book and student progress book
• the Oxford “o-book” website (registration code in your textbook) at www.oxforddigital.com.au
• Mathletics website (username and password distributed at school) www.mathletics.com.au
• Mathsmate worksheets for homework supported by SkillBuilders at www.mathsmate.net
• Maths300 activities from www.maths300.esa.edu.au/
• Maths Association of Victoria materials

We are starting with a unit of work on whole numbers – place value, basic operations, indices and square roots, order of operations, multiples, factors and prime numbers. We may have the opportunity to use the iPads with an app called “CountBy”, which is illustrated above. You can use this 100 square grid to create an “Erastothene’s Sieve”, which allows you to find the prime numbers under 100.

Today your task is to identify an area of difficulty – use your Mathsmate sheets or Mathletics activities – and write yourself a goal. For example, “Today I will work out how to simplify ratios” or “I need to practise converting fractions to percentages”. You can print out the Skill Builders from Mathsmate or use the corresponding activities on Mathletics to practise. Ten minutes before the bell, leave a comment below about your goal and what you achieved.

We have spent the last few weeks learning about algebra – what do we know now, that we didn’t know before?

• Pronumerals, co-efficients, variables and constants
• Expressions
• Backtracking
• Solving equations

This site, MathsNet has some algebra games you might like to try. Choose the expression or constant that you need to remove from the equation and apply the opposite sign.

So far we have looked at the basic rules for algebra in expressions – leaving out the multiplication sign and the ’1′ in front of a pronumeral, adding and subtracting ‘like terms’ and multiplying and dividing with pronumerals. Next we will look at multiplying and dividing with indices and then using equations.

Maths is Fun has a quick tutorial on how to use exponents with six questions you can try online.

The Algebra Balance Scales are all about doing the same thing to both sides. So if you remove to blocks from one side do the same to the other side.

Algebra Balance Scales with Negatives is a little more difficult – balloons act as negative numbers to counter-act the weights.

When you have spent about 15 minutes on each activity, leave me a comment to let me know what you found easy, what you found difficult and what you learnt from these two interactive learning objects.

Some people admit they don’t like algebra, usually because of a negative experience at school in maths class. In fact, algebra has a pretty bad name, even amongst students who don’t really know what it is about (perhaps we can blame the popular media for that?). In fact, algebra is just a way to model mathematical expressions and equations using pronumerals instead of numbers. Like another language. Here are three sites to start you off on the right foot with algebra:

Shape times Shape is an activity where you discover which shapes represent which numbers, using a series of multiplication problems.

BBC Bitesize has an introduction to algebra using formulae.

Maths is Fun also has an introduction to algebra which includes a brief explanation with some examples.

Another interesting way to learn about algebra is with “Off Road Algebra” from MathMatters. This resource includes videos of off road motorcycles riding up ramps and off jumps and some other dirty stunts. The maths is a series of problems including converting litres to gallons, working out the length of the third side of a triangular track and time and distance.Check out the MathMatters – HotChalk website here.