Most consumer propane tanks in the US are 20lbs tanks. It is safe to fill those up to 20lbs (they in fact take a bit more). “Swap your tank” companies like AmeriGas and others fill it to 15lbs, citing “safety concerns”. It’s like “Hey, yeah, we completely ignore the fact that these containers can be filled up to 20lbs, and we fill them to 15lbs, but charge you a full 20lbs, but hey, we’re concerned about your safety…”

Yeah, right…

Always fill in your tanks at metered stations.

I don’t see that “validated” means one student feels exactly the same about their contribution as another. Frankly, while all contributions have value, this isn’t the same as all contributions being equal.

Actually I think I’m coming back round to my first thought, that it would be best to tell the story of the dollar store then show the first slide – “look what they did!”. That picture of the white rain bottles is the real hook here. That’s when it gets awesomely cool.

I think Dan is seeing this in black and white, or thinks that I’m seeing it in black and white, or something like that!

Pupils invest in the lessons to varying degrees and their degrees of involvement will fluctuate over the course of a lesson. I’m sure we can all agree on that.

The purpose of the initial discussion is to draw the students in, if I understand correctly. My contention is that having a discussion which is a variant of “guess what the teacher wants to talk about” in the form “guess what happens next” is structurally similar to asking a class, half way through an equation, “can anyone tell me what the next line will be?”. The latter is just plain bad practice.

It’s worth mentioning that I’m dealing with classes of 30. Dan may have much smaller classes in mind.

On a more positive note, I would suggest running the start of a lesson as a think-pair share. Give each student 1 minute to consider a solution to the problem, then give students another minute in pairs to discuss their solutions amongst themselves, then finally take responses from pairs. This will at least mean that every student will have spoken about the problem before you move on to how the store actually dealt with it [although – was it really the store that dealt with it? Wasn’t it the shampoo company that changed the bottles rather than the store?].

1. Steve, I want to learn more about ‘complex instruction’. How do I do that? I live near enough that I could visit San Lorenzo High in January (while my college is between semesters); is that possible?

2. Factoring may not have real-life applications, but it leads into cool deeper math topics. I see it as very important in algebra. (But teaching students who don’t want to be there might make me change my tune. I’d want to give them topics they could identify with, even if they weren’t math fans.)

3. Dan, I was interested in the point Robert Jones brought up. I struggled with that point when I first read your post (compulsively honest as I am). You did have an agenda, a topic you wanted to talk about.

I guess your point is to not jump too fast to your own agenda, that it’s not a game of ‘guess what the teacher wants to talk about’ if you value their first discussion. Only after respecting that discussion is it time for the one you were waiting for. Have I got that right, Dan? Robert, what do you think of this way of framing it?