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It’s Taco Truck time. Check out our lesson synthesis, which is thick with numbers and symbols.

Students experience numbers and symbols in math class so often that it becomes easy to forget they are a means and not an end. We use them because they’re powerful.

In this lesson, I encourage you to help students understand math’s power by asking students to first start with their senses.

Your class will likely split between different paths here, creating the need for a tool that’s stronger than our intuition.

 

We start with our senses, but our senses don’t give us enough certainty. So we turn to numbers and symbols as a language for our intuition.

 

Once you find the person who wins the race to the taco truck, I encourage you to return to this first screen and celebrate the student whose intuition served them well. This will help students understand how much you value their ability to use symbols but also to express their intuition.

 

Dan & the Desmos Classroom Team

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Great advice from other teachers.

 

Vancouver, WA

 

Make it a competition challenge to see who can find the quickest path to the taco truck. Offer up a prize of your choice for the student in each class that can use their knowledge of the Pythagorean Theorem to find the quickest path. Also ask the winner to show their work to ensure they just didn't guess.

Previous Previews

• [8.8.2] — From Squares to Roots — Start with their senses.
• [8.8.5] — Filling Cubes — You can't break math.
• [8.8.8] — Triangle Tracing Turtle — You can't break math.