Have you ever seen this? Over the course of their schooling, some students come to believe they need to shut down the part of themselves that knows anything about the world outside math class in order to be successful inside math class. Students calculate unreasonable answers to word problems—120 watermelons in my wagon!—and suppress the part of themselves that knows that that’s too many watermelons!
Some students decide to leave their senses at the door of their math class. You have the opportunity to help students understand that their sense of the world is valuable and necessary and, in fact, an ideal starting place for their math learning.
Throughout Flower Power, we’ll invite students to use numerical methods like sampling to find the number of marigolds in a garden. But before you help students learn those methods, I encourage you to ask them briefly, “How many marigolds do you think are here? What’s a number of marigolds you’re pretty sure is too high? Too low?”
They can keep those numbers next to them throughout the rest of their investigation, as a guide, as a check on their later answers. By asking them to start with their senses, you’ll have helped them repair their relationship with mathematics and understand the value of their early ideas. Bring those ideas into class—don’t leave them outside!
Dan & the Desmos Classroom Team at Amplify
PS. Please give us feedback on the last lesson.
Use the feedback form or just click your answer below then click "Submit" on the form!
How likely is it that you would recommend this lesson to a friend or colleague?
.png?width=1200&height=120&upscale=true&name=DM_Logo_6-A1%20(1).png "DM_Logo_6-A1 (1)"){kind=logo}
