Category: ratios
I transferred schools at the end of last year, so for the first time in seven years, every one of my students I meet on the first day of school will be a stranger. This means that the first hour I have with each of the four classes is not only their introduction to the course, but also their introduction to me. It won’t take long for them to make an impression of me, of mathematics, of their classmates, and how I expect us all to co-exist for the next five months or so.
I have written on first day tasks before, but not for several years. In that post I identify four “attributes” of an effective first-day task*. One of the tasks I settled on for this year was The Shoe Sale task from Peter Liljedahl. (Other bloggers have documented work with the problem as well: e.g. Fawn Nguyen and Chris Hunter).
Discussion is one of the organic ways through which human interaction occurs, but not all discussion is created equal in the math classroom. The tone of discussion relies on the mode of listening (Davis, 1996). Most classroom talk focuses on an evaluative mode of listening. Students are expected to share, compare, and contrast solutions to problems.
I do think that justification of their solutions gets at some important points regarding mathematical reasoning, but would like to move the discussion to center around that exact feature–the reasoning.
A colleague is a religious McDonalds’ coffee drinker. One day she showed up with a medium coffee and a cream on the side. It was in two separate cups:
I asked her for her cups when she was done. (She is also a math teacher so understands that this is not a creepy request. It is no weirder than the time I bought 400 ping pong balls, or 1500 bendy straws). I then made her a request to buy a large and small coffee in the future and save me the cups.
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Spinner Data Task
The difference between what should happen and what does happen is a difficult distinction for students. They are so used to finding exact answers in the back of textbooks, that differing experimental results create an sense of uneasiness. At an early age (Grade 9 in my province) we begin to introduce students to the ideas of sampling and experimental probability.
The topic is usually approached with a project or survey of schoolmates. The results are then tallied and then used to create “probabilities” of various things such as favourite sports team, food, or colour. I love the philosophy behind the project approach; student initiative and autonomy is a powerful thing. I, however, don’t like that the experiment involves humans. Here’s why…
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Leaky Faucet Task
This idea is not my own. The only problem is, I don’t exactly know who it belongs to. I remember tweeps talking about about a task where a leaky faucet’s effect was analysed on a water bill. When I encountered the situation at my Uncle’s house, I had to capture the modelling in action.
The best part was the conversation from intrigued (and weirded out) relatives as I ducked and dived around the tap to get a good angle. We got into a conversation about teaching, and they were happy to present any questions that came to their minds.
My thoughts have begun to turn to the new school year that will occur in August. This may be jumping the gun, but I like to enter prepared. This is partly due to the possibility of job action, and the surety of football, in the fall. I like to spend the first couple days of school working on basic numeracy skills with my grade 9s and 10s. I find a nice task is much more effective than a few worksheets. I do, however, keep a supply of worksheets on hand to offer to kids who just want the assignment. This idea came to me while I was reading an old edition of “The Hockey News” earlier this year. It has been taking up space on my desk, so I figured blogging about it would allow me to file it away for the beginning of next year.