Week 10/4-10/7 Summary

This week we began on Monday looking at functions by playing "What's My Rule," where students chose either a 1-step (ex. guess x 5 = result) or 2-step rules (ex. guess x 5 -1 = result) to develop an understanding of functions. A function is a pairing of 2 sets of numbers so that each number in the first set corresponds exactly to 1 number in the second set

Ex.

x 1 2 3 4 5

y 5 10 15 20 25

We then practice how we could turn our "rules," or functions, into equations using the variables x and y (ex. y=5x).

On Tuesday, we reviewed coordinate graphs, identifying coordinate pairs and placing coordinate pairs on a graph. We also had the opportunity to graph some of the functions we worked with on Monday.

Wednesday was our investigation day, where students worked in their table groups to determine "How does the thickness of a bridge affect its breaking weight?" using paper bridges and pennies as their loads. Based on the results collected for thickness of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 sheets of paper, students predicted how much their bridge would hold if it was 6 or 7 layers thick.

Thursday we shared our data and found the class averages for each thickness. We discussed how sometimes our data may not be perfectly linear, however we can use a graph model (or a straight line or curve that shows the trend in the data) to make predictions based on our data. Students created graph models of the class data and used their graph models to make predictions about the breaking weights of different thicknesses. Students also created graph models for different data sets in which the points were often less linear than those of our class data and compared/contrasted with their table mates as they discussed how they developed their graph models.

Coming up...Linear equations!