Day 40: Nguyening Them Over

Today's question:

The responses I got back fell into two categories: Students who think math is boring and those who love my class.

My favorite one:

Mirror, Mirror, on the wall,
Who's the mathiest of them all?  I AM! 

2+2=4
I love math, I want more!

9*9=81!
Just like that, a problem's done!

How great is that!  I think I want to do this again later in the year and see how the responses have changed.

In the geometry class, we went over the guided notes for a section dealing with postulates.  After we finished it, we completed our trials for The Lady and The Tiger.  I am pleased to say that no one was eaten by tigers!

The paperwork for that would be awful.

Then Pre-algebra.  After going over the warm-up and answering questions about the homework, I started talking about adding unlike fractions.  When I talked about division of fractions, I took a page from Fawn and used the method of rectangles.  As is my wont, I didn't think through the lesson all that well, but I loved the concept and wanted to do it again.

So today, I did!

I used the same basic method as division:

1/3 + 3/4

Draw two boxes that are 3x4.  Shade 1/3 of the first and 3/4 of the second (going down rows/columns).  Each of those boxes is a rectangular pizza cut into the same number of slices.  How many pieces did you eat total?(numerator)  How many slices in a pizza?(demoninator)

The kids who normally get lost picked it up VERY quickly and were excited to try it on their own. (Including a student who hasn't done much of anything all year.  This lit his fire!)

In sad news, the marking period is ending and people are going to start realizing that I haven't been grading anything.  I'm going to have to come up with an assessment for the last two chapters...

I hate to ruin good learning with grades.  It changes the motivation from intrinsic to extrinsic.


Also, I began experimenting with letting kids go to the bathroom between classes, provided they come back on time.  I will start keeping a list of kids who are late and they will lose the privilege of going.