The teacher I'm helping with my volunteer work had a rougher time than usual today. She had to drill them with jumping jacks, insistent questions, etc., to get their attention. She eventually got the class back to paying attention, sort of, but it was a lot of work. The problem was the very first problem, which was not an equation (too many unknowns--unknown number of pizza slices for unknown number of guests) and for which the technique she wanted was not totally clear. The students intuitively knew the answer, but it was not clear what she was trying to get across with the technique, and she basically lost them for a while because of that.
It appears that, when you are starting a class, you need to boot up with something interactive, comprehensible, and not too challenging, to get a good feeling going around the class. Even if it doesn't contribute too much to the actual learning, you need to set a friendly, positive "onda".
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Reaching the kids: set a few simple rules, lather rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat
Currently volunteering in an intervention class for sixth graders. The teacher is enthusiastic and smart, I am learning a lot from her. Right now they are covering basic algebraic techniques for solving equations. To drive the point home to the kids, she started off with two simple rules:
1) Letters are loners
2) Anything you do to one side of the equation you do to the other
That really is all there is to it, when teaching the basics of algebra. You want one side of the equation to have a single instance of a variable with no coefficient (letters are loners), and the other side to have no constant.
Many kids don't get the "what you do to one side you have to do to the other" thing right off the bat but, as with many math concepts, it sticks with them better if you anthropomorphize it. In this case, she says that if you do something to one side the other side "gets jealous". I tried this out on my son and at first he took it too literally, saying "why would one side always want what the other side has"? So I explained that sides of the equation are like his little sister--if she sees you eating liver and mud, then she will say "I want some liver and mud too"! Then it made more sense to him!
1) Letters are loners
2) Anything you do to one side of the equation you do to the other
That really is all there is to it, when teaching the basics of algebra. You want one side of the equation to have a single instance of a variable with no coefficient (letters are loners), and the other side to have no constant.
Many kids don't get the "what you do to one side you have to do to the other" thing right off the bat but, as with many math concepts, it sticks with them better if you anthropomorphize it. In this case, she says that if you do something to one side the other side "gets jealous". I tried this out on my son and at first he took it too literally, saying "why would one side always want what the other side has"? So I explained that sides of the equation are like his little sister--if she sees you eating liver and mud, then she will say "I want some liver and mud too"! Then it made more sense to him!
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