Monday 9 July 2012

Notes from the IWB Network Meeting – Weds 4th July 2012


Notes from the IWB Network Meeting – Weds 4th July 2012

Present:
Kathryn, Janet, Louise, Simon, Rachel (Cottenham), Glenn (St Peters), Mike (Linton), Paul (Longsands), Sarah (Ely), Fran, Alissa (Parkside), Mark (Comberton)

Thanks to Rachel for hosting the meeting.

The focus of the session was Algebra.

Mark:
A photo-finish from the Athens Olympics 100m.  Asking what this shows (without revealing the source) provides some interesting discussion:
How do we know it is a sprint?
What do the vertical lines show?
How do we know who won?
How do we know, from this picture, who came second?  (we don’t)
How many runners are there?
Up to this point we had only used it as an image, so we discussed how to use the board to enhance the discussion. 
                Use the camera tool to take a picture of one of the runners and move it to help estimate how far behind the final runner is.
                Demonstrate that the width of the lanes can’t be used to help decide the margin of victory.

Rachel:
Rachel shared an nrich problem (http://nrich.maths.org/7283) that works very well when the pieces are created as separate rectangles on the IWB because they can be moved around to show the different possibilities.
The questions posed by nrich (and others) were typed on a slide for pupils to use.

Sarah:
Sarah uses geometrical diagrams to allow pupils to work on algebraic expressions.  For example, start with a square with area x and a quarter circle (radius the same as the side of the square) with area y.  Then make other diagrams.  Eg the area of a semi-circle is 2y, etc.
We explored how to make the fragment that has area (xy) made by subtracting the quarter circle from the square.

Alissa:
Alissa shared a file that involved balancing animal pictures as a way of introducing and exploring simultaneous equations.  This worked very well.

Glenn:
Glenn showed a way of helping pupils to understand what is going on when trial and improvement is carried out.  He gave an example using n2 + n = 25, showing a numberline from 0 to 10 and removing the sections that clearly didn’t work until he was left with the 4-to-5 section.
Then he had a new numberline that ran from 4 to 5 in tenths and removed sections of this.
We discussed whether the zoom function on SMART could be helpful.

Mike:
Mike described a way of helping pupils not to be misled into trying to simplify further an expression that is already in its simplest form.  For example, to show that 3x+2 is not identical to 5x, Mike draws a line that he labels as being of length 1, another line (of a different, non-integer length) that he labels x and then clones these and makes a line to demonstrate the length 3x+2 and another, below it, to demonstrate 5x.  The lines are different.
An extension to this can show that x2 + 3x is not the same as 4x2

Rachel:
Using photographs of celebrities Rach used the camera tool to take a picture of one half, copied and reflected it and used this to test the idea that symmetrical faces are considered to be more attractive.
She then allowed pupils to use photos of themselves …


Next year:
This was the final meeting for this academic year.
Next year we will meet on four occasions as usual.  Cottenham, Parkside and Comberton all indicated a willingness to host a meeting.

Thanks to all for their input during the year.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Thanks for sharing all of these valuable ideas. Sorry I have not made it along to any meetings this year - I have appreciated the ideas being blogged after each session, though!

Richard (Coleridge/Parkside)