Friday, March 11, 2011

Weekly Class Summary: Mar. 7-11

SOLs Covered: (New) SOL 6.20 Graphing Inequalities; SOL 6.2 & 7.6 (New 6.1 & 7.4) Ratios, Rates, & Proportions
Math Dictionary Sections: (19) Properties of Real Numbers; (20) Algebraic Concepts; (21) Graphing Inequalties(22) Ratios, Rates, & Proportions
Upcoming Assessments: Ratios, Rates, & Proportions Quiz (Tues. 3/15/11); 9th WWU Spiral Quiz (Fri. 3/18/11)

After completing our Algebra, Properities, and Inequalities review and assessment at the beginnig of the week, we began working with Ratios, Rates, and Proportions. We started by discussing how we've been working with ratios all year through all of our work with fractions. However, we also started exploring how ratios and rates can be more complex than simply denoting "parts of a whole" as all of our fraction work has been thus far. There was discussion of the many types of rates that are part of our daily lives: the price of gas per gallon, speed limits in the form of miles per hour (mph), the number of miles that can be driven on a gallon of gas (mpg), map distance compared to actual distance, the price of produce sold by the pound in grocery stores, etc. We watched several NASA videos that delved into ratios other practical uses for using ratios and proportions, including how the Wright brothers worked on changing the wings' aspect ratio to improve their flight trials. The week ended with an M&M's® activity, which had students comparing the number of each color candy to the others and the total. This will be connected with the upcoming unit when students begin learning percents.




2 comments:

math dictionary said...

Nice video.

Nasa connect is great.

Thanks for sharing.

Ms. Lambert said...

Thanks! I've found a ton of great videos from NASA through their various YouTube channels, which can be found under my subscriptions on my YouTube channel. Thanks for providing the link to the online math dictionary!