Math is Back Baby!!

To all my loyal reader out there, the blog you are about to read will take you on a path down a road lined with numbers.  My math class this quarter is all about best practices in teach students mathematics.  So consider yourselves forewarned if you are looking for quick wit, dry humor, and maybe a little curl at the corners of your mouth....you just might find some here!!  Let's math blog:

Three questions will be the core of each and every "math blog" I write (hence forth knows as the "MOG")

1)  What did I learn (in class)?

2)  What do I have questions about?

3)  What are the implications for classroom practice?

So let's start with #2.  Our class was given multiple math problems that required us to come up with algebraic functions to act as "rules" to help find answers.  Stuff like "you have x number of adults and x number of kids on one side of a river and we need to find out y, how many trips it will take to get all the people across the river under m set of parameters."  My question is simple....are we suppose to know this stuff ourselves if we are going to be teaching it to kids?  If not...shouldn't we?

Back to Question 1:  I learned in class that a collaborative group working on the same problem can offer you several different ways of getting to the same destination.  I pretty much gave up on the river problem when one of the people in my group said "what about if you do this....."  Oh yeah I said, and the ball started rolling.  Unfortunately the ball didn't stop rolling until 5 hours and 12 pieces of scratch paper later when I finally came up with the function.  I could also state that I relearned several math concepts that clearly I had forgotten.  (x-2)^2 needs to use old Mr. FOIL...not Mr. Simplemath like I tried. 

Implications for classroom practice:  Well the answer is in the question....practice!!  Make sure you know the answers from all directions, or at least feel confident that you will be able to see everything the kids will see.  Putting my student hat on I realize we are being taught ways to teach this material, not ways to do it.  So one major implication this lesson has for classroom practice would be to think about how we as teachers can get the students to think about these problems in different ways.  How can we offer up hints that keep them intrigued without allowing them to feel overwhelmed to the point they want to give up. 

I will say I called several friends and threw myself a party when I came up with the answer to the problem.  It was a success that I hadn't felt since the old college days when I would put days into figuring out a math problem.  I notice that most of my math problems the past so many years have begun to all start with "How are we going to pay for x with y in the bank and z yelling gimme gimme gimme?"

MOG #1 Out