Maths

What is a typical Wantirna College Year 7 student?

Well it appears that the typical Year 7 student spends 3 hours a day on their phone, 6 hours a week playing sport outside of school and has 30 items in their pencil case. Ýear 7 students have recently finished their first unit of work in Maths which included How well do you know your calculator? as well as What is a typical Year 7 student? 

The digital tools unit was begun this year as an introduction to using their calculator efficiently. Students were pleasantly surprised to find that they could calculate fractions as well as use their calculators to complete questions on time. When Year 7 students were asked what they learnt in the unit, here was some responses. 

Keerthana 7S: That calculators are really interesting and have a lot of hidden uses.

Aiden 7S: How to use a calculator PROPERLY.

Luke 7S: That calculators are more powerful than I thought. 

The statistics section built on the knowledge of mean, median and mode that some students had learnt in primary school. At the Year 7 level the focus is on analysis and calculating from graphs. The students were introduced to stem and leaf plots.  When asked what students enjoyed from the unit some responses were:

Brendan 7B: challenging myself & doing extended work

Charlie 7S: I enjoyed making graphs on excel.

Caitlin 7S: Turning data into a graph and doing lots of surveys.

The unit was very popular with Ms Nguyen’s 7F class. They even made a ‘real’ stem and leaf plot using items in their pencil case data. 

Some students in the mixed ability classes had access to the same workbook as 7S and reported to have enjoyed being stretched. 

Students are expected to complete short Mathspace tasks each week for homework. There are three levels of tasks set. 7Essential which is intended for those who require modification, mainstream Year 7 and stretch skills which we call the 7S tasks. If parents believe their child is not being set tasks at an appropriate level they can contact their class teacher and ask for it to be changed. There is the capacity to attach a parent’s email to their child’s account. Parents will then be emailed when their child has a task due. If parents wish to be attached to their child’s account they should contact their teacher or email me.

Leanne Wilson 

Mathematics

wil@wantirnacollege.vic.edu.au