Students are tasked to build a times table in just two steps. They have to learn to use absolute as well as relative addressing to do, and the Lab takes them through using them. We encourage students to work with just a row or a column rather than with the table as a whole because doing so makes it easier to see what is wrong or what does not follow the pattern. We believe students should learn to struggle to solve problems and that persistence, patience, and grit are important for all of us to have. We therefore do not want to tell students how to do something but rather to let them explore and try and keep at it until they get it. Spreadsheets with their openness and feedback provide a great opportunity for doing this in Labs like this. It is one of our favorites.
Tag: addressing
Rows and Columns
We use the hundreds table to introduce rows and columns and focus students on seeing the patterns in these tables. Again and again we go back to making rules and using rules to ask and answer questions. For example, what rule would you make to fill in a column on the hundreds table. NOTE: we use color to connect a numbered task to a picture. You can remind students that they can change these colors if they want and copy and paste without changing a color by choosing Paste Formulas in the Paste Menu.