Activity 1: Seat map of a plane (What is a good system?)

of students’ thinking. In this study, there are six activities designed which will be implemented in more or less six lesson. The HLT of each activity will be described as follow.

4.1 Activity 1: Seat map of a plane (What is a good system?) Learning Goal:

Through this activity I hope that:

 Students can make a system to organize a thing, in this case is the plane’s seats

 Students aware of row/line and column

 Students aware that to locate a thing precisely need at least two parameters

(line/row and column). It is not enough if only consider one variable/parameter, for example just consider the row.

 Students understand what a good system is.

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Starting point: There is no specific skill that needed to do this activity.

Mathematical activity:

Students and teacher discuss or talk about their experience in riding an airplane or their knowledge about airplane. If there is none that know about the sets of airplane then teacher can show them some picture of the airplane’s seat map and start the discussion about the need of system.

Then the teacher In group of 4 or 5, the students are asked to solve this following problem and make a poster of their answer and thinking.

A new flight company brought some new planes which can take 148 passengers (16 first class passengers and 132 2nd class/economy passengers). The company wants to number the seats. However they do not want to number it from 1 until 148 because it will be not efficient.

 Discuss with your friend beside you, why the system 1-148 is not preferred?

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 In group, can you help the company to make a better system for the seat’s number?

Should be noted that, the aim of this discussion is to make students aware that although there’s a system 1-148 (they can numbers the seats from 1 to 148) but that system is not effective or cannot help much to the stewardess and passenger to find and tell the location of an object/seat effectively and easily. So there’s better system that can help them to organize and locate a thing better than just count it one by one. In other word, this discussion is emphasized or focused on the importance of a system, why we need a system and what a good system is.

Furthermore, orchestrate discussion about the criteria of a good system for the seats’ number. Maybe it should not make the passengers and stewardesses confuse, easy to find, only for a passenger/ never happen become a seat for two different people, one seat for one person, etc.

Prediction of students’ responses:

Question: “Why numbering the seats from 1 to 148 is not favorable?”

Students may answer:

 It is not favorable because it will difficult to find the seat

 It will take a long time to count the seat one by one or to see it one by one

 It is difficult to count because the number of the seats in the first class and

second class is different. So we cannot do skip counting or multiply it easily.

The system that may occur:

 Students may make a system of the seat with only consider the number of line not the column. For example, seat in the row or line 3 (seats number 3).

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 Students may differentiate the system within first class and second class. For

the first class they may only number it from 1 to 16 but for the second class they may only use the number of line which is 1 to 22.

 Students may not differentiate the first and second class and start to number/

count the line from the first row till 26th rows.

 Students may also consider right and left seat (separate the group of seats as

left and right group) and start to number the row. So they will make a system based on row and left right group.

 Maybe students symbolize the left and right as A and B

 Students may consider row and column. So they will number the seat as combination of the row and column like row 1 and column 2 as (1.2) or maybe just by telling “it is in the 1st row and 2nd column”

 Students may symbolize the row with number and column with alphabet (A to F) and differentiate the first class.

 Students may not differentiate the first and second class and symbolize the row

as number 1 to 26, and column as A to F. While for the first class there will be only column A to D.

 Students may directly come up with the idea numbering the seat with “12A”

(combine number and alphabet) because they ever ride the airplane.

Main Issue: the students may or may not find the good system. all of the students’

answer is bring to the class discussion. The discussion is emphasized on why the systems is good system and why not. Here the good systems that may occur:

 Combining number and alphabet like 12A

 Reverse it so A1

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 Combining number and number like 3.4

 Numbering it as 124 which mean first column seat number 24 (24^th row).

 We expect that students may answer that a system is considered as a good

system if we can easily find a location of an object using that system and we can easily tell that location to other without any ambiguous meaning.

4.2 Activity 2: Seat map of a cinema (How a system works?)