Class #14--9th Age Math

Wednesday, October 13, 8:30 A.M. 9th Age Math Class. Class #14 on my “50 Classes or Bust!” It is a crisp Wednesday morning, and there is no place that I would rather be than in a 9th Age math class! Ms. Gentry has clearly already established a good routine with her seven students. As they arrive, they get their homework out, and then five students go to the board to complete one of the homework problems. The students are solving various addition equations and then indicating whether the problem is an example of the associative or commutative properties. The class then discusses the differences among rounding, estimating, and providing exact answers. Ms. Gentry reminds her pupils to look for key phrases in the word problem, e.g. the word “about” suggests that an estimate is required. Knowing that the students will get antsy if they sit in one place for 55 minutes, Ms. Gentry has the students stand, stretch, and then move to a different seat. Next, she projects a “Five-Minute Check” onto the wall to ensure that the students have a solid understanding of the concepts. (Our new Lower School math series (Math Connects) has a rich suite of online resources for faculty and students to use). The class is only 25 minutes old and the class is on its third activity. The pace is brisk but entirely appropriate. This “Five-Minute Check” is a win-win—the students enjoy the technology, and Ms. Gentry gets a good sense of her students’ comprehension. Still employing the projector, the class plays this really cool (honestly, “cool” is the best word here!) called Roboworks. It is an interactive game; if a student gets a correct answer, then a piece is added to the robot’s body, with the goal of constructing a complete robot. The students construct two whole robots with their correct answers! (One “cool” feature—the two robots that are made look entirely different). The period concludes with a preview of the night’s homework. Please enjoy the pictures below, one “old-school” (a student doing a massive addition problem on the board), and one “new-school” (Roboworks). Congrats to Ms. Gentry and her students for a terrific math class! By the way, here are two fast facts about Ms. Gentry: she is a Calvert graduate (a proud member of the Centennial Class of 1997), and she played collegiate lacrosse at Boston University.