There’s a common misconception that Java is related to JavaScript - like a parent or cousin.
It also turns the lesson from “you need to know about percentages because you need to know about percentages (have a unit test, etc.)” to students asking “How do I work with percentages to solve this problem?” (intrinsic motivation).This game review is part of our ‘Game of Code Week’ series. I’d rather my students use what they feel is most convenient and they won’t unless they are used to working with numbers represented in different ways. I don’t like that most textbooks treat these as different units, isolating them from one another. If I use 0.000001 then the model would be 0.000301m tall which isn’t reasonable so I think it will be either 1:200 = 1/200 = 0.005 or 1:500 = 1/500 = 0.002…”.Īs we are also developing number sense, we are practicing different forms of representing a quantity: fraction, decimal, percent, ratio, etc. “The Eiffel tower is very large and needs to be shrunk so I am looking for a scale factor less than 1. I hope students could reason out appropriate choices and demonstrate their understanding of scale factors. Here I’m still looking for communication of understanding. How big is the reproduction if you use your scale factor? Do your choices make sense? Eiffel tower (301m) I also followed up with a similar set of figures and scale factors:Ĭhoose an appropriate scale factor for each item. Even if they think 150m is reasonable for the F16, that makes means the Statue of Liberty is either 9.3m or 1.86m and would tip off a student that they need to reconsider their choices. The values were chosen strategically so that if one takes the wrong scale factor, it will effect another choice. That makes the real jet 150m long but still tells me they understand something about how a scale factor is applied.
Someone struggling can give me a response like “The fighter jet is smaller than a real fighter jet so you must have used a small scale factor. I feel like that helps take the focus away from getting the answer and moves to thinking about how the answer was obtained. There are lots of entry points here, and the answers are given. The world’s largest hockey stick is 205ft long How big is the actual item if you use your scale factor? Do your choices make sense? A picture of a virus is 10cm in a textbook The simple approach (one that tries to simplify concepts into procedures) is really the one that makes people think math is complicated. Now things feel really complicated because they don’t understand what they are doing. The side effect is that students will associate multiplication with scale factors and use it in other situations where they shouldn’t. If I say multiply the scale factor by the original size to get the model, you will get an answer but you haven’t spent any time understanding how that process works. It feels a lot easier if all I do is explain “the rules” and try to keep things simple to get an answer (I used to pride myself on that ability). I attribute this to the need for an answer vs. I also see the lack of understanding when I say I have a model car that is 40cm long and the real car is 400cm, what’s the scale factor? Some will say 1/10 (40/400), others 10 (400/40). Strange, even if they didn’t understand how scale factors work I would hope that they would recognize that 4cm is not a reasonable size of a real car. Now I ask, how big is the original if the model car I have is 40cm long and the scale factor is 1/10? Many will tell me 40 * 1/10 = 4cm. Most students will reach for the mechanical answer, 400 * 1/10 = 40cm. I make a model using a scale factor of 1/10. It goes like this: I have a car that is 400cm long. I’m teaching scale factors right now and I find it very illustrative of the problems that happen when students are learning mathematics as a set of procedures.