Math Challenges

Math Challenges are like Crossfit for your brain.

Crossfit workouts were designed to challenge your body by forcing it to constantly switch up what muscle group is being worked. Instead of only 1 concept, our math tests cover several concepts that we've been working on. This means that we need to decode each problem to figure out what type of problem it is before we solve it. Like Crossfit, this helps our brains develop stronger connections.

This week's test has questions that reflect what we've been learning about linear growing patterns and solving percent problems.

Our Reflection Journals have thoughtful reflections about what we understand about math concepts. We can use our Reflection Journals during tests. This is why we spend so much time writing thoughtful reflections and why it's so important that they are complete and up to date.

Guidance System Challenge

We worked on another challenge today! The goals of the challenge were to:

• develop questioning skills to clearly define a problem

• practise effective collaboration skills

• communicate ideas effectively in oral presentations

We needed to ask about 30 questions in order to determine the actual criteria for the challenge (see image opposite). It took some time to figure out how we could use just 2 sounds to direct a blindfolded person through a maze. We had time to test out 3 guidance systems today. Logan, Brooke & Austin used just 2 sounds: a clap and a stomp to direct Ms Quaranta safely through the maze. Julia, Connor and Matthew used 3 sounds to guide Mr. Acaster safely through the maze.

It was wonderful to see everyone demonstrating a positive mindset throughout the whole challenge, even when things didn't go as planned.

In the next few days, we will prepare 1-minute oral presentations to explain how to use our guidance systems.

Thank you to Ms. Quaranta and Mr. Acaster for volunteering to be our test subjects!

Oral presentations will be on Wednesday October 14

Percent Reflection & Practice Problems

Today, in our reflection journals, we wrote a detailed reflection on how to solve a variety of percent problems. This will be a really helpful resource to help remind us how to solve these problems (see image upper right).

A reminder .... students are expected to complete reflections at home if they don't have time during class.

We also started work on practice problems to make sure we have mastered this (see image lower right). We'll keep working on these problems throughout the week.

You can always go to our Google classroom to find all the notes and practice problems.

Solving Percent Problems

We are learning different strategies to solve percent problems. What we have discovered is that regardless of the type of problem, drawing a visual to represent the problems is usually helpful.

We realized that looking at solutions gives us a false sense that we actually understand. We know we need to do a LOT of practice to master solving percent problems.

Over the next few days, everyone is encouraged to explain how to solve at least one percent problem to someone at home.