Activity type 5: Spider

What are Spider activities?

Spider activities are closely related to Practice activities, with the key difference being that each example on the outside is related to the example on the inside (as opposed to consecutive examples being related in Practice activities).

Instructions

Below are the instructions I share with students. You will certainly need to model this way of thinking if it is the first time students have experienced it. And, of course, modify these instructions to suit the needs of your students.

Do your working out in your book or on a mini-whiteboard and just write your final answer on the worksheet

  1. Answer the question in the middle box
  2. Chose one of the outer boxes – you can start anywhere you like
  3. Reflect – how is this example the same and how is it different from the example in the middle?
  4. Expect – based on what you noticed, can you predict anything about what the answer will be?
  5. Check – work out the answer and write it in the box
  6. Explain – If your expectation and check are different, can you understand the relationship now? If your expectation and check are the same, how would you explain the relationship to someone who doesn’t understand yet?
  7. Now do the same approach with a different box
  8. For the dashed box, can you change the example as little as possible to get this answer?
  9. For the dotty box, create your own example by changing the example in the middle, and then do Reflect, Expect, Check, Explain
  10. When you have finished (or the teacher tells you), choose the relationship you think you can explain the best and try to explain it as clearly as possible (use words, pictures, more examples… whatever you like!) to help someone who doesn’t understand it yet

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