Comments on: Great Classroom Action

By: Alice Wise

Alice Wise — Sun, 24 Mar 2013 15:35:28 +0000

These are all awesome ideas! It’s a shame we can’t cram them all in one half semester. My personal favorite was the investigator idea because it’s something that you can build on first by giving students a goal and teach math in the mean time. The investigator’s sub-projects are also very malleable and short and easy to work with as a theme! Great post; bookmarked!

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 21:58:54 +0000

Julie Reulbach:

Maybe, save the “procedures” for last? You know, the actual lesson with the steps and the summary of all of the rules they discovered but didn’t realize it.

Yup, that works for me.

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Fri, 22 Mar 2013 17:17:16 +0000

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By: Julie Reulbach

Julie Reulbach — Fri, 22 Mar 2013 14:45:54 +0000

Thanks for the suggestion Dan. I spend much time tricking my students into “doing the math” while thinking that they are NOT “doing the math”. I would like to come up with a better “name” for it as we are going to start compiling our “Begin at the end” lessons in a combined document. I don’t know if I want to say save the computation for last because my students do simple computation all the way through the activity as well. Maybe, save the “procedures” for last? You know, the actual lesson with the steps and the summary of all of the rules they discovered but didn’t realize it. Suggestions are greatly appreciated! Thanks for the idea. I love our math community! :)

By: Bruce Ferrington

Bruce Ferrington — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 19:43:21 +0000

Love the idea of “cognitive conflict” – it is that kind of provocation that obliges kids to think.

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:37:54 +0000

Get a room you two.

By: Calcdave

Calcdave — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:18:01 +0000

Sam. A rose is a rose is a rose. You smell sweet (and sticky?) to me!

By: Sam Shah

Sam Shah — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:10:30 +0000

Seriously, calcdave, this is GENIUS. I need so many things like this in my teaching repertoire. I need moves like this which help kids analogize and remember why we’re doing what we’re doing in human (less abstract) terms… It’s similar to what Bowman talks about… making something “sticky” (calcdave, hold your tongue)… Now if I can only remember this post-spring-break, and then build it into my teaching… First you teach me to multiply matrices, and now this? Love you mucho.

By: Calcdave

Calcdave — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:03:22 +0000

Re: Sam’s worksheet

I tell my students we all go by different names. You guys call me “Mr. Petersen,” some people call me “Dave,” others “David,” my mom calls me “son,” etc. Each of the names can reveal a different thing about me (and you), but at the core I’m still me. Sometimes I really WANT to be called “Mr. Petersen” because that’s what makes the most sense in that context. Other times it’s weird if my friends call me that. (This same analogy can be done with “looks.” Like how you dress up for a date, but slob around to clean the house. Still you inside, but different look and different uses for different places/times/functions.)

Sometimes we want to use “1,” other times we need 1 to look like “2/2” (think common denominators), still other times it’s useful to have sin^2(x)/(1-cos^2 x). At the core, they’re all the same, but they look different and we call them different names.