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Real Life Graphs: Probing Questions

Whether you are looking for a question to stimulate discussion in lesson, or a challenge at the end of a homework, then hopefully you will find these useful.

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Convince Me That... keyboard_arrow_up
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I use Convince Me That questions lots in my lessons and homeworks. Providing students with a statement and challenging them to come up with as many different ways of convincing you as possible can lead to some fascinating discussions. The different ways of seeing the same thing can also help improve the depth of students’ understanding. Thanks so much to the Thornleigh Maths Department, in particular Erica Richards, Anton Lewis and Gareth Fairclough for helping me put these together, and we will endeavour to keep adding more!

You could plot your journey to school on a graph

Horizontal sections on distance-time graphs means the object is stationary

Steeper sections on distance-time graphs means the object is going faster

Stationary sections on speed-time graphs do not mean the object is stationary

VI3 Treatment keyboard_arrow_up
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We devised VI3 Treatment as a versatile way of giving students meaningful follow-up work at once we have marked their homework. The idea is that students are challenged to come up with 3 things with certain constraints. These are idea to use as an extension for students who have got everything correct, and also as further purposeful practise for students who have got a particular question wrong. Thanks so much to the Thornleigh Maths Department, in particular Erica Richards, Anton Lewis and Gareth Fairclough for helping me put these together, and we will endeavour to keep adding more!

Sketch a distance-time graph of your journey home from school, highlighting 3 sections and describing what they show

Sketch 3 vases and draw their "height of water"-time graphs next to each one to show what happens when water is added at a constant rate