Math class cares a lot about getting right answers. This is understandable. Right answers are nice, and in many cases, preferable to wrong ones. But learning a new concept doesn’t have the same stakes as building a rocket or performing a life-or-death medical procedure. When learning something new, it can be very helpful to explore wrong answers first. Before students can find a right answer, they can often contribute a wrong one and defend how they know it’s wrong.
What does it look like in DinoPops?
In this lesson, we ask students to create and box up DinoPops, each of which is a scale copy of every other. Consider starting class together with the warm-up, as everyone watches your screen.
“Someone give me a width,” you could ask. (You can’t break math! Any number will do.) Then consider asking students to give a number for the height they know will be incorrect. Ask them how they know it’ll be wrong. Then plug it into the table and verify that it’s wrong.
When students give a wrong answer and explain how they know it’s wrong, there are two likely outcomes. One, they’ll start to understand that wrong answers are valuable, not shameful. Two, they’ll experience realizations that may eventually help them find the right answer. Both of those outcomes are likely to invite more student thinking later!
Have fun with this one!
Dan & the Desmos Classroom Team
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