Mairead's Reflection:
We got started on this on Friday and had some really good conversations happen. I handed it out to them and talked about how we are now trying to find examples of relationships that are not functions and that this process helps us understand what is a function a little better. They got to work and I walked around to talk to small groups and try to prod some groups into making the next step. On the first one (graphical) we had one group draw a vertical line and then explain to me why it wasn't a function - they did a really good job and later shared this on the doc camera with the whole class. For the word one we had a student give a description of someone running with input being time and output being speed - they thought this wasn't a function because they had a chunk of time in the middle where their runner took a break so he didn't have an output during that time - they said it wasn't a function because it wasn't continuous. I would have liked to have more time here as I could have had all the groups take a few minutes to draw a graph to go with this description but I was short on time so I drew the graph and we talked about why their description was still a function even if it wasn't "continuous". Then one girl put up her hand just at the end of this discussion and said she had come up with another example - she said that when airlines overbook a flight that some seats are assigned to more than one person so the input would be seat number and the output would be person assigned to that seat - I thought this was a great example of a non-function and that's pretty much where we ended the discussion. I will need to come back at the beginning of the next class and talk about any of the types of counter examples that we didn't get to on Friday. I also handed out 1.1C at the same time as 1.1B on Friday - telling anyone who got done with 1.1B to get started on 1.1C. I had been hoping to get well into 1.1C and send them home with the rest of it as HW but it was not to be. Therefore I will need to start with this on Monday and I'm not sure what that will do to the rest of my planned schedule. I will have to see. Overall this was a good day!