SCHOOL DIRECTORY
Catholic Education South Australia
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Situations can be modelled using linear equations, and systems of these equations can be used to inform decision making. 

 

Inquiry Questions

How might we use patterns to help explain our physical world?
How might we use systems of equations to make sense of financial decisions?

Link to Australian Curriculum

Resources

Desmos

Desmos is an interactive graphing calculator that allows teachers to set engaging instruction, exploration and practice tasks. With many existing resources, and capacity to create your own, there are applications for all year levels and topics. 

A collection of activities, each used by South Australian teachers in the past, that can be used to engage students in learning activities of between 10 and 40 minutes, in concepts related to number and algebra. 

Consider using the activity builder to assign questions that will allow you to gauge student understanding. 

Link: Activity Collection

Khan Academy

A learning sequence that relates to solving simultaneous equations. Individual videos can be used to provide direct instruction or support, while the related questions can be set as practice as they have aligned support and feedback. 

GeoGebra

GeoGebra is dynamic mathematics software for all levels of education that brings together geometry, algebra, spreadsheets, graphing, statistics and calculus in one easy-to-use package. 

GeoGebra has a number of interesting simulations and animations that show the effect of compound interest. While often teachers use spreadsheets in class, this can be a way a more flexible way to share with a whole class remotely. 

Link: GeoGebra simulation

reSolve

The reSolve teaching resources provide exemplary materials from Years F to 10. They put into practice the elements of the reSolve Protocol and promote fluency, deep understanding, strategic problem solving, and mathematical reasoning. A number of the resources have been made by South Australian teachers, and all are aligned with the Australian Curriculum 

As an inquiry protocol, these mathematics resources do need some structure and group norms to be formed around them, but when used effectively, they can be powerful. This activity can be a nice way to bridge algebraic modelling in the topic with the financial mathematics concepts also covered. 

Link: ReSolve learning activity

Open Middle

While “Open Middle” is an unusual name for a website of mathematics problems, it is a great way of getting students to practice and work within a higher depth of knowledge and conceptual understanding and encourage critical and creative thinking to approach a problem. 

Link: Systems of Equations

Link: Exponents 

The problems in this section can be set for practice in a lesson, reducing the number of problems that need to be set. The strategy for the teacher is to “talk-through” the different methods and supporting students to move beyond “guess and check” methods and consider linking their prior knowledge to solve the problems. 

Diagnostic Questions

Diagnostic questions are designed to help identify, and crucially understand students' mistakes and misconceptions in an efficient and accurate manner. In a remote learning environment, these questions are vital for checking on progress. At crucial moments in a lesson, set a diagnostic question or two to quickly ascertain the progress of the class, and importantly, understand misconceptions quickly, which can be hard to achieve in a remote environment. You will need to sign in (for free) to access. 

Link: Diagnostic Question set

This set of questions relates to simultaneous equations. After a period of content delivery or inquiry, set one or two diagnostic questions, to each member of the class via the Learning Management System, collect the results and identify any student or group of students that have misconceptions that you can then address. Some of these questions are particularly good as they have questions such as “what would be a valid next step?”.