Math Links for Week Ending June 10th, 2016

I have started to put some of my calculus activities online. The first one is a card matching activity where students are given a set of cards with linear, quadratic or cubic functions on them and they are to match them in pairs (functions and their derivatives). A relatively simplistic activity that reinforces how functions and their derivatives are connected.
Curriculum Tags: MCV4U
http://engaging-math.blogspot.ca/2016/06/derivative-matching-cards.html

Another calculus activity that I finally completed has students graphically develop the derivative of quadratic and cubic functions by guessing at the slopes of the tangents. If they get those tangents correct then the derivative will appear. It's a great activity for students just as you are introducing the idea of what a derivative is. Eventually I will have a low tech version of this posted but for now, the tech version. Click on the link below to make your own copy.

Curriculum Tags: MCV4U

https://teacher.desmos.com/activitybuilder/custom/571ed42ef68cf5f10ee49d22

Apparently I had some time this week because my third post was a set of Canadian data (specifically, Ontario) about rebates on electric cars. The premiss of the article is that luxury electrical car owners are getting undeserved rebates. But there is lots of data to be had for single and double variable analysis.

Curriculum Tags: MBF3C, MDM4U
http://found-data.blogspot.ca/2016/06/electric-car-rebates.html

Some cool stuff from the Friday five from @Desmos. I love the Sketchy Parabolas as it's a great way to ease into quadratics without getting too technical. Then once students grasp their parabolic knowledge they can try the quadratic Des-Draw and then end up doing some Calculus and learning about Turning points. Plus a couple more.

Curriculum Tags: MPM2P, MPM2D, MCV4U
http://blog.desmos.com/post/145375409943/friday-five-for-june-3

I typically don't focus much on these MindShift posts but this one resonated with me. The idea that we shouldn't be giving students all the information but let them discover on their own. And a strategy to get deep discussion in your math classes. Thanks to @KMarkPet for this one

Curriculum Tags: All

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2016/06/08/five-classroom-dimensions-that-show-deep-math-learning-is-happening/

Here is a fun little video from @StandupMaths on whether any of the town squares in New York City are actually squares. Along the way he helps define what a sqaure is and looks at the properties of them as well as triangles.
Curriculum Tags: Gr8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfR1Jkl5R8A

This week I was in a virtual learning session that had a great problem that could span several grades. The premiss was that we were given the picture below and asked to show how it proves the equation shown. We had some good solutions but the most interesting stuff was when we got to see some of the solutions from students from different grade levels give their solutions (from grade 2 all the way to the gr9) . See them here and some of our solutions here. My favroute was the Math vine below
Curriculum Tags: All
http://sim.abel.yorku.ca/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/TWO-THE-PICTURE-PROBLEM-1.pdf

#springsim2016 Here is our attempt to illustrate the sum of cubes with a #mathvine pic.twitter.com/SfQvZ7hfJg

— Michael Jacobs (@msbjacobs) June 8, 2016