Today’s warm-up was a Superbowl-themed puzzle. My students got this pretty quickly today. The second warm-up activity that we looked at was connecting shapes with fractions, decimals, and percents.
Our next task was to get to the boards in our random groups and look at some questions involving number lines. They were given a number line with a single number at one end and they were asked to place as many numbers as they could on the number line. They were instructed to be mindful of place and space. Most students were able to put the 0 on the opposite end, and then they worked together to fill in the rest.
Next, we looked at a series of pictures with coloured tiles. Students were asked to describe what they saw. The groups did a great job describing percent, decimal, and fractional representations of the images. Most groups were on task, but as you can see from the pictures, they sure enjoyed doodling.
This doodling was an excellent segue into our next task. What better topic than “math meets art”? Students then returned to their seats and we talked about the artist Ellsworth-Kelly . The activity that they were going to work on next was creating their own abstract art, inspired by the works of Ellsworth-Kelly.
Once they had their design coloured, each student was required to calculate the fraction, decimal, and percent that each colour represented in their piece of art. I had some pretty great exemplars in my pre-IB class.
Students could choose from grids that had 100, 396, and 400 squares to make their designs. Students that choose the 100 grid and completed the activity correctly, could earn a level 3 because they had met the expectation but did not exceed it. I encouraged students to challenge themselves and try the large grids for their designs to earn a level 4 or 4++.
Well, that wraps up day 5. I hope this post was able to help you along your teaching journey.
Have a great day!