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SMILE Spreadsheets
This resource from SMILE Mathematics contains 20 activities for using spreadsheets to solve mathematical problems in the classroom, rather than gaining spreadsheet skills in the computer room. By encouraging students to use spreadsheets when appropriate to the mathematics, they can be an aid to the development of mathematical thinking. Students should begin working with pencil, paper and a calculator, to allow them to get an understanding of the problem before using a spreadsheet to generate some results for analysis.
The activities:
Target 100 - place value and estimation
Dividing investigation - place value and decimals
Trick or treat - patterns and generalisations
Calculator trial and error - trial and improvement
A rich aunt - cumulative totals or constructing formulae
Again and again - sequences leading to limits
Consecutives - analysis of prime factors
Pamphlets - trial and improvement
Differences - sequences from polynomials leading to generalisations
Percentage problems - compound percentage increase or decrease
Jeans - effect of price increases on large quantities of material
Square root investigation - sequences formed by multiples of square roots
Strings - integer parts of a sequence
Averaging out - limits of sequences from the means of previous terms
What's recurring? - recurring and non-recurring decimal parts from fractions
String - open ended activity
A problem of power - calculating powers and modulos
Limits - iterative processes to find cube and square roots
Optimising - maximum volume
Converging sequences - limits of sequences leading to algebraic proof
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Student activities 9.26 MB
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Teachers book 10.51 MB
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Hints and answers 10.96 MB
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Student activities 9.26 MB -
Teachers book 10.51 MB
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Hints and answers 10.96 MB
Download all files as a .zip29.72 MB
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