Lesson Activities: Grade 12 Data Management/ Advanced Functions

Lesson Activities: Grade 12 Data Management/ Advanced Functions

I find Data Management is a math course many teachers may not be comfortable with teaching because they are not as familiar with the subject content.  For this reason, I believe that many teachers teach this course in a very traditional way (i.e. a lot of lecture & note taking), which is unfortunate because data management is a course that has a lot of opportunity for experimenting and inquiry learning. 

Colleen demonstrated this through her presentation on discrete probability.  She had in place 5 different probability scenarios that students could work on: rolling 2 dice, choosing a coloured egg from a bag at random, spinning a spinner, choosing a card from a deck of cards, and flipping a quarter.  I think data management is the type of course students would learn best from hands on experience, and using tangible objects to understand problems and how to solve them.  I also think the extension questions would be good to use to help students better understand probability and sample space. 

The other math course that was covered during the presentations was advanced functions.  I find that out of the three university preparation course options, the most common one students take is advanced function, and so I was glad that these topics were covered during our class. 

I really liked Elise’s lesson activity on solving logs because it was a fun way to get students to practice the math concept.  The activity was playing war with a deck of cards that had log equations rather than numbers, and the students had to solve the equations in order to determine who had the highest number.  This is a cool activity to use with students because they get to practice log equations without feeling like they are completing a list of questions.  I also like this activity because students need to work to solve their own log problems as well as their group members to ensure no one is cheating.  This activity is a great and fun method to get students to practice many different math concepts at any grade or level.
 

The lesson activity Harsimran demonstrated was another fun way to have students practicing log rules, and would be best implemented as the lesson proceeding Elise’s.  During her activity, we were required to solve a problem as a group and if we got the answer correct, one of our group members got to attempt to throw our crumpled up solution into the recycling bin.  A point was rewarded to each group if they got their paper in the bin.  I liked this activity because it got students up and moving, as well as motivated them to completed the questions.  I think this activity is another great way to have students practice math questions without feeling like they are.  A great thing about this activity is that it can be easily implemented with any class/ grade for any lesson.  All the teacher needs is the list of questions, and some scrap paper. 

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