This week I
and two of my peers presented on topics at the college and workplace levels. I definitely appreciated the new approaches
that my peers took and can definitely think of ways to integrate these new
methods into my future teaching!
The first
presenter focused on compound interest for a grade 11 college level class. He started the lesson by first going over the
formula for compound interest, indicating what each variable stood for and
reminding us of certain ways things are added into the formula (ex. interest is
in decimal form, time is in number of times per year, etc.) He then applied the lesson to the real world
by having the students look at different types of payment methods when
purchasing a brand new $2000.00 TV. Each
table received a different method and had to calculate what the interest would
be, any applicable fees, any benefits or cash back, and the total cost to buy
the TV. After some time to do
calculations, everyone shared their answers and as a class we discussed the
different benefits of each payment method.
I really enjoyed this presentation because although it was simple, it
touched upon a subject that many students will enjoy learning about and will
apply to their everyday life as they grow older. There’s not much that I would change with
this activity. I would maybe try to
incorporate technology and have students research the different credit card
companies themselves, or allow them to select certain ones in class and
research it together – this way students can investigate the different types of
credit cards they are actually interested in and may have in the future. A small concern was that when given to
groups, not every person was a contributing member. In our group there were 5 of us and only 1 or
2 people really wrote out the formula and did the calculations – there just
wasn’t enough work to be spread around.
In the future I would maybe alter it to accommodate for that concern.
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The second
presenter did an activity focusing on experimental and theoretical
probabilities in a grade 12 workplace and everyday life level class. She did this by using the card game
Blackjack. Each group was given a deck
of cards. The rules of blackjack were
quickly explained – if you get an ace and any card with a value of 10 (10, J, Q,
K), that is 21 points, or blackjack, and you win. If you go over 21 points, you bust or lose
and if you’re under 21, you still have a chance of winning, as long as your
value is higher than the dealer’s. For
the first part of the activity, we simply had to see how easy it was to get a
blackjack with only two cards. For our
table, this resulted in 0 blackjacks in 50 trials. The highest a table got was 2 blackjacks in
50 trials. This gave us our experimental
probability. We then checked our
theoretical probability by calculating the probability of drawing an ace
followed by drawing a value 10 card and multiplying it by 2 for symmetry. This was cool because we could compare what
we actually got to what we theoretically should have gotten. Lastly, we got to play blackjack at our table
(without gambling) and see if using probability actually increases your
probability of winning! I think that
this was a great activity to use when teaching data management to young
students. Everyone loves card games and
by incorporating this into a concept that can be very challenging for some
makes the concept much less intimidating and much more fun. The one thing I would change about this
activity is the final portion of actually playing blackjack. Although it was fun, some people at our table
had experience and some did not so it took some time to fully explain the
dynamics of the game to the new players.
Therefore, more time needed to be allotted to this part of the activity
as we were only able to play a few rounds.
As well, some students were given the probability charts to see if they
won more often, however, not much was discussed about the probability
charts. It may be biased because I’m so
interest in the math behind things, but I think it could have been beneficial
for students to hear the mathematics behind why the chart would tell them to do
certain things.
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Overall, I really enjoyed the topics
this week! I can definitely see myself
using these ideas in the future!
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