Comments on: “You Can Always Add. You Can’t Subtract.”

By: STAND & TALKS. The best thing I ever did to get students talking to one another. – Sara Vanderwerf

Fri, 11 Aug 2017 19:47:34 +0000

[…] question from the task at the start. Â I encourage you to start with a ‘scenario’. Â Here is a favorite one I used instead of starting with the classic ‘painted cube problem. Â Th… Â Love […]

By: Student Autonomy: The Missing link – CanFlip14 Presession Materials | judylarsen

Thu, 09 Oct 2014 15:45:41 +0000

[…] Read Dan Meyer’s blog post on the painted cube problem (found here) and consider how cognitive autonomy is being elicited by his […]

By: blaw0013

blaw0013 — Sun, 05 Oct 2014 18:46:13 +0000

This task appears in IMP as an end-of-unit “Take-Home Test” (i.e. collaborative). https://www.dropbox.com/s/6k9pwj16vkif91m/Patterns%20TH%20Test.JPG?dl=0

By: dy/dan » Blog Archive » Developing The Question: Good work!

dy/dan » Blog Archive » Developing The Question: Good work! — Thu, 14 Aug 2014 12:05:18 +0000

[…] technique runs back to my workshop participant’s advice that “you can always add but you can’t subtract.” Once you tell your students your question, you can’t ask “What questions do you […]

By: Nutting things out and intellectual play | Curiouser and Curiouser

Nutting things out and intellectual play | Curiouser and Curiouser — Wed, 02 Jul 2014 22:17:04 +0000

[…] addition to the problems posed in Tanton’s videos and books,Â Dan Meyer and Michael PershanÂ recently discussed less scaffolding as a means to make problems more complex. […]

By: Laura McKenzie

Laura McKenzie — Fri, 06 Jun 2014 01:23:44 +0000

Just wanted to direct your attention to CPM.org. the lessons often have a nice option for helping with this dilemma. They have an interesting question then have a section on the following pages called Further Guidance. I love a good set up and the TE and training are excellent for showing how to intervene and not.

By: l hodge

l hodge — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 00:51:51 +0000

A book question asking for a guess feels a little odd. It is like I am talking to myself when I right my guess down. If the computer asks, I feel like the computer actually wants to know what my guess is, and perhaps will do something with my guess as in the penny circle.

I agree with James that Nicole’s setup comes very close to answering the question. And I agree with Dan that it prompts the question of what happens with bigger cubes. It does both at the same time. That is why it is such a nice model. Maybe some people disagree on what constitutes a “model”. To me, one of Nicole’s cubes is already a model — a better and more flexible one than the equations and graphs requested in the original problem.

I agree with Brian that the rich thinking has been sacrificed in order to steer students towards covering standards — in this case a narrow view of “modeling” (graphs & equations). The penny circle does this as well. The student’s participation in building the model is limited to entering data and picking between options lest they wonder off script in search of a more natural approach.

By: Jason Dyer

Jason Dyer — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 16:56:29 +0000

We should include those scaffolds because lots of teachers need them. But the print medium affects those scaffolds in non-trivial ways, compressing them into the same visual space most importantly. Print is a huge part of the problem here.

You could subtract if you had an e-book that let you. Make it easy to change how much detail the student sees. Want them to make their own table? Sure, just click the button that hides it from them. Don’t like the follow-up questions? Kill them with a click and add your own.

By: Kevin Hall

Kevin Hall — Wed, 04 Jun 2014 03:07:08 +0000

Stop citing good books and articles–I already have enough to read, sheesh!

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Tue, 03 Jun 2014 22:25:06 +0000

There is a part of A-M I’m struggling to define that’s almost impossible to do with paper. That includes interactions where you ask for a guess and a rationale for that guess from every student, after which the textbook finds a student’s guess that’s far from yours and displays that student’s rationale to you and your rationale to her and we all win. I can’t say it’s impossible on paper but the limit is approaching impossible.

There are questions that are possible on paper like “What’s your guess?” but what the computer does with the responses is also very hard to do on paper. The aggregation, analysis, and display of the guesses, for instance.

Aside from all those digital enhancements, the only other trouble is that paper is costly and weighty which means we have to pack every square inch as full of math problem as we can. A-Z all on the same page, if possible.

The trouble there is that part M might undercut the force of part F. I ask you “Is the model linear, quadratic, or exponential?” and then later ask “What would the data look like if the model was quadratic instead?” Or I ask you “What’s your question about this thing?” and then tell you your question right afterwards.

Impossible to fix? No, but you’d have to, like, put each part of the problem in a different visual space which is totally weird and we might as well just jump online at that point IMO.