Hello! Welcome back to post by yours truly. Today is a scimatix post (science/mathematics). In this unit we focused on polynomials and like terms (if you don’t know what that means click here). To show what I did I will be basing this blog post around 4 curricular competencies we have to use this year and providing examples from our project.
Before I dive right into that here is a short project summary. My partner and I, my partner was Taylor, had to design something and use polynomials and like terms while creating the project or to explain the project. Pretty open ended project, if you will. Taylor and I made a little model house. And we used Polynomials and like terms to calculate the cost of building this house.
- Connect mathematical concepts to each other and to other areas and personal interests.
The example: to create this project we had to have an understanding of polynomials, like terms and how to group them and of basic addition and how percentage calculation. This is demonstrated by when we had to calculate the cost of our house:
It was also connected to personal interests by all the little touches we added to the house. Like the birds, which Taylor was a big fan of.
2. Represent mathematical ideas in concrete, pictorial, and symbolic forms.
The example: It was challenging to think of the different parts of our model as like terms. Because a lot of the time that is just hard to visualize, but I think we represented that well in our project. As an example you can see the picture below which has all the different values assigned to the different parts.
3. Develop, demonstrate, and apply mathematical understanding through play, inquiry, and problem solving.
The example: this was definitely a fun project. It was sort of like kids building LEGO houses. So we learnt the math by doing something fun but also applying a solution that could work in real life (using like terms to calculate the cost of many small different items and components).
4. Model mathematics in contextualized experiences.
The example: I think my project is a good example of this curricular competency. We created a physical model and took mathematics out of the *virtual* pages of our textbooks and applied into real life.
That’s it for today! See you next time