Grade 7 & 8 Math

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/curriculum/elementary/math18curr.pdf

Week 9’s class focused on looking deeper at the grade 7 and 8 Math curriculum. Even though I hope to be teaching high school math, it was very interesting to take a better look at the concepts being taught in grade 7 and 8. As a high school teacher, it will be important to know what knowledge students enter high school with.

A really interesting activity we did was developing a sequence of expectations from grade 7 through 9. We looked at the different strands and discussed where we thought expectations would be sequenced. It was more common to have grade 7 and 8 expectations sequences well, but it wasn’t always easy to find the grade 9 expectation for a particular topic. When teaching grade 9, I think this is going to be an important resource to remember and take into consideration when teaching. 

Making sense of division of fractions

https://www.pinterest.com/ranndomvariable/fractions/

Before this week, I had not considered why the method of invert and multiply works when dividing fractions. I was taught to invert and multiply and never questioned it. 

A concept like division of fractions doesn’t really seem like it would be that complicated to explain, but it certainly got me thinking. 

When being asked to divide 2 whole numbers, or even a whole number and 1 fraction, the use of a visual can demonstrate the process well.

However, when dividing a fraction by another fraction, it becomes a little harder. After thinking about this for a couple weeks, and seeing several different explanations in class, I now feel like I have an okay understanding of it. Looking at the division of fractions got me thinking about other concepts we tell students to do without explanation of why. 

Overall, I really enjoyed the task at looking deeper into my understanding of division of fractions.