Using ICT in mathematics case study 1 - 'Engaging the boys'

Headline

‘When I assessed my children they could not find the nth term in a linear sequence’
This lesson is designed to get children exploring linear sequences and in particular finding rules for the nth term.

Context

A London fringe school 11–16 Specialist Engineering College.

Mathematics teaching and learning objectives

Generate terms of a sequence using term-to-term and position-to term expressions for sequences, on paper and using ICT. Generate sequences from practical contexts and write an expression to describe the nth term of an arithmetic sequence. (Objectives from year 8 programme of study).
The lesson focused upon understanding the processes involved in finding the nth term of a linear sequence.

ICT resources and context

The lesson was delivered using an interactive whiteboard with whole class interaction. The material could easily be used with children using laptops or individual workstations.

Explanation of the lessons (including materials used)

An assessment prior to the lesson identified a weakness in generating the nth term. The lesson was a series of spreadsheet activities starting with whole multiples of n and moving on to y = mc + c sequences with an integer coefficient.

The teaching was largely in the nature of a presentation of ideas structured to enable scaffolding of the concept into small bites of information at a time. Alongside each of these small bites was careful questioning by the teacher that lead the activity and supported the independent tasks leading to an overall understanding of and success with the concept of describing the nth term of a sequence. The screenshots show two of the spreadsheet files that were used.

Evaluation of the impact of ICT on the learning

This lesson increased the perceived pace of the students learning as they enjoyed the activities.

The use of ICT allowed instant feedback for the children, and encouraged them to refine their answers. The use of the spreadsheet allowed children to work on the underlying concepts.

In particular, boys who find concentration difficult responded well allowing them to make greater than expected progress.

Opportunities for future development

Possible further activities would be to develop the numerical sequences in order that children had to find rules that involve fractional and negative differences.

A development with ICT could be to edit the macro to generate a wider variety of sequences, to link into graphs or to give non-sequential terms of a sequence.

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