Salutations peoples and welcome back to my blog! It’s been a while since I’ve even checked up on here but that’s ok because starting this week I’ll be posting all the time. Anyway, I’m in grade 9 now and we’ve already gone through so much I’m not gonna lie, its all a little overwhelming. Since I’ve neglected to introduce the topic of this post I will now move into that.
geralt / Pixabay
In the past month we have been studying the laws of exponents and working towards creating a physical game in which at least 4 of said laws are used. We started to work with simple exponents and quickly moved into the more “complex” stuff. I say “complex” as if its not because once you gather an understanding of these laws they become less and less complicated, especially while solving them mentally. Since we got to the point where we could mentally do basic exponential equations when we went on our field study in September we were in need of a little refresher when we returned 10 days later. We soon picked up on what we had forgotten and worked with our partners on our games for the following week continuously receiving feedback and revising our rules.
My partner, Kaia and I decided to format our game using cards and a die. When trying to incorporate the 4 different laws into the game we struggled a little bit as to how we could make it more fun and easier for our audience to understand. We eventually came to the conclusion that it was best to make our own cards and use them as a base. This was what we though was the best solution at the time and it worked well. Our game wasn’t difficult to understand but we found that when putting it into words, especially in our rules, we needed to be more clear.
This year we have been introduced to the idea of using curricular competencies as a guide to how our final products should look and work. For this particular project ur competencies were “Reasoning and Analyzing,” along with “Applying and Innovating.” The rubric we were given clearly explained that by the end of this project we should be able to, “demonstrate and apply mental math strategies and use logic and patterns to solve puzzles and play games.” I believe that since the beginning of this project, I’ve progressed in these competencies and gained a clear understanding on the big idea and exponent laws as a whole.
Working with these competencies allowed for us to get a rough idea of what we needed to accomplish and what we had to do in order to achieve that goal. Our game started with the idea to make a mash up of poker and go fish and we came through with a similar idea in our final product. Kaia and I went through multiple steps getting us to where we needed to be including the incorporation of candy as a betting pawn and interchanging the laws we used. As we look back upon our drafts, building knowledge, and milestones, we can easily recognize our growth in both the curricular competencies.
Ciara ✌️
