My 3 rules for Algebra. Meg Craig made them pretty, I framed them, and went over them in Alg 2 Honors class last period. Today we moved into Literal Equations. That is how I teach the rules and reinforce the rules, with literals.
Typically, these are one of the hardest things learners to grasp and wrap their head around. I am taking my physics book from college to the board and writing down formulas from it and from chemistry. Go.
And it was tough. Learners who can tell you that 25-25 is zero in a heartbeat will balk at v – v is zero. So there is a lot of coaching an patience as they work through the ideas of “The Rules” and the differences in how addition and multiplication act with respect to distribution.
It was difficult, fun, and frustrating but they are getting the concept of solving equations, all equations, no matter what they look like. I will spend one more day, so that means 2 and a partial period on this. I think it is time well spent.
AP Statistics
The 6 W’s a H:
Who, What, When, Where, Why, by Whom and How. This is the introduction to thinking and reading scientifically. ScienceDaily.com is my friend during these couple of days, and the biggest stumbling blocks were finding the variables (the What) and the population of interest (the Who). I have added a 6th W, “by Whom”. I have found that helps with the learners wanting to put the author’s name in the “Who” spot. If they have a place for them up front, they can’t be part of the “who”.
Yesterday’s assignment was to grab one article from ScienceDaily and detail the W’s and H.I don’t think one learner did it fully correctly, though. I know that every single learner I helped one on one did not (and that was most!).
To help, in class we did a couple of problems from the textbook, which are … okay. Nothing earth shattering; they are short, and the learners can use keywords to figure out the answers quickly. Then we did 1 article from ScienceDaily on the board. I projected it from the web and we went through it, finding all the information. That helped too.
Finally, I handed each group of 2 an article and had them discuss the W’s and H together. I circulated and answered questions. They then swapped articles and did it again.
At this point, they have read 4 to 5 different articles from ScienceDaily. That is 4 to 5 more than they have read in the past. Reading these articles is a different skill than reading the fiction that English teachers have them read, and I think this is useful to getting the learners to be in a Stats frame of mind. I hope so at least.
The assignment for next class is to redo last night’s homework. Cross it out, start over, and do it right.
Ugh, I’m going to slow down just so you can teach things before me!! I did not enforce the rules enough, but will do better next week, I promise. 🙂