First Math Class

We started the new week (second week of school already!) with our first Math class. All week students will be working individually and collaboratively to figure out Math problems that have been deliberately chosen to assess their sense of numbers and the ability to reason proportionally.

Proportional Reasoning is HUGE in the Math curriculum, so what exactly is it? Proportional Reasoning involves the deliberate use of multiplicative relationships to compare quantities and to predict the value of one quantity based on the values of another.The essence of proportional reasoning is the consideration of number in relative terms, rather than absolute terms. Students are using proportional reasoning when they decide that a group of 3 children growing to 9 children is a more significant change than a group of 100 children growing to 150, since the number tripled in the first case; but only grew by 50%, not even doubling, in the second case. 

Although The Ontario Curriculum documents for mathematics do not reference the term proportional relationships until Grade 4, activities in the primary grades support the development of proportional thinking. For example, if we ask students to compare the worth of a group of four nickels to the worth of a group of four pennies, we are helping them to develop proportional thinking. 

To start things off, the students viewed a video read aloud of the book "If You Made a Million" by David Schwartz.  

They then worked independently on the following Math Problem. Below are samples of students' work.