Opening Activities-MATRIX Year 2

Picture of the actual game screen

How the West Was One + Three x Four

During the month of September Mr. McGrail's sixth grade math class participated in a tournament for championship of "How the West Was One..." The "West" math game allows students to develop their mastery of the mathematical order of operations through a challenging adventure game. Students also used computers in the classroom and in the Tech Lab to write letters to fifth graders explaining the order of operations. The results of these activities are impressive and the students look forward to doing more tech enriched math lessons.

Who's the Best?

The Data Tells!

In September, Mrs. Freeman’s seventh grade math classes worked on a web quest entitled “Who’s the Best Player in the Major Leagues?” This particular project was designed to go along with Chapter 1 in the seventh grade math text; focusing on the use of several types of graphs and measures of central tendency. The students had to come up with their own definition of the best player. Searching varies websites on six current major league players; they obtained several statistics to determine who might be the very best. Once students gathered their data, MS Excel was used to represent the information in a spreadsheet. The final product was displayed in poster format, including pictures of players, hand written and computer generated graphs, spreadsheets including the measures of central tendency, and an explanation of the player they surmised to be the best in the MBL.

moving graph gif

Create A Graph Online!

Mr. McGrail's seventh graders used the mobile lab to create one each of a bar graph, line graph, and circle graph. The students enjoyed learning to use the Create A Graph website tools to complete this task. Students were instructed to use 'amounts' for the bar graphs, 'change over time' for the line graphs, and 'percents or parts of a whole' for the circle graphs. Students will continue to explore this complex topic in math.

Technology + Math =Fun

MacKinnon eighth graders recently completed the first of the MATRIX Math units created during the teachers' summer workshop. In this math activity, Which Airline is Best?, the students were able to create a table of solutions for various linear equations; graph these lines; relate them to a point; and analyze the results. In addition , the eighth graders used the classroom computers to graph these equations on the Graphing Calculators Program. Using a "How To" sheet, the students were able to complete this task, save the screen to a clipboard and then to their folders, and print out a picture of the screen.

The students truly enjoyed this activity!