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Bingo Lingo

This time of year, the standards used to measure the success of a lesson may look different than they do at other times of the year.  For example, some teachers might consider “Students not using worksheets to have paper airplane throwing contest” to consistute a lesson well executed.  To a certain extent, I am joking, but there’s a thread of reality there.   Think back to a time when your excitement for a future event prevented you from doing anything productive.  Now imagine leading a room full of 32 people with that same excitement and handing them a manual for their new scanner/copier.  You get the idea.

I can usually distinguish between my being pleased with a lesson based on lowered expectations and my being pleased with a lesson because of a high level of learning and collaboration.  Today was the latter, with my 9th grade probability and statistics class again.

I found this on Don Steward’s website.  If you have seen his blog and are not fascinated, or at least intrigued, we cannot be friends.  He comes up with some amazingly simple, yet elegant classroom problems.

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We started this yesterday.  They are in groups of 4; the oldest student in the group got to choose first and so on.  Then they played three “games” using a pair of dice and a whiteboard with their numbers on it.  Today, they worked on figuring out why the “6,7” card was the best and determining how to rearrange the numbers  on the cards to make them all equally likely to win.

I’ve had this glossy paper in my room forever, so I decided to have them make a mini-poster with their solution and some reasoning.  Here are my two favorites:

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Talking Pizza and Pennies

Today was a banner day in my ninth grade probability and statistics class.

First, our number talk was a bite out of the real-world and not the “you and 5 friends share 8 pizzas” kind of real-world.  When my daughter has a babysitter, as she did last night, I usually spring for pizza.  (Yes, our vegan lifestyle maintains a real iron-grip on nutrition when mom and dad are gone.)  I even splurge on the good stuff:  $5 Pizza.

With tax, my vegan-less vice cost $5.36.  I gave the cashier $20.11.  How much change did I receive?

Lots of great strategies:  counting up, counting down, counting to the middle even.  It’s worth noting that the two students in each class that insisted on stacking the numbers and borrowing were not able to do so correctly.  I say this not to discount the standard algorithm.  Rather I wish to point out that in this case, when it’s necessary to borrow three times, the standard algorithm is blatantly inefficient.

The students had to know why on earth I would give the cashier $20.11 rather than just $20.  The answer: Quarters.  Because if you’re at the store with a 4 year old and you do not have a quarter for a gumball machine, god help you.

The main portion of the lesson was the real magic. This problem is from Strength in Numbers by Ilana Horn:

Imagine that you have two pockets and that each pocket contains a penny, a nickel and a dime.  You reach in and remove one coin from each pocket.  Assume that for each pocket, the penny, the nickel, and the dime are equally likely to be removed.  What is the probability that your two coins will total exactly two cents?

They sit in groups of three or four.  I gave each group a large piece of paper, had them put a circle in the middle for their final solution and then divide the paper into 4 sections for their individual work.  When looking through my pictures of student work, I noticed that I have a tendency to capture correct work (but differing methods), but I do not take photos very often of incorrect work.  Today, I changed that.

Here is a sample of their strategies for determining the number of outcomes:

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The level of discussion was exquisite.    But what’s more important was that they were able to work together to organize their thinking and to make sense of their solution.  They built on what they knew an gained conceptual understanding as a result.  In addition, they were able to focus on understanding their path to the solution rather than simply being satisfied with the solution itself.  I’m very proud of them.

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Creative Craziness

I teach a lot of 9th graders this trimester. We offer a class called probability and statistics 9 and it is open to 9th grade students who also will have had the quadratic portion of algebra 1 this year. I really enjoy this class for multiple reasons. First, it lends itself very well to applying math to real-world scenarios.  Secondly, the hands-on opportunities are endless.
One of the issues I have been committed to improving with my own professional demeanor is the way I deal with 9th grade boys. Nothing brings out my sarcastic, short-tempered, disagreeable side like the antics of freshman boys. There’s something about the decision to play soccer with a recycling bin that just invokes the my inpatient side. Regardless, I need to develop more patience with this demographic. Boys are unique, both in the way that they act and the way that they perceive acceptable behavior. I’m not talking about “I’m bored” acting out. I’m talking about the “I really need to see if this eraser will fit in this kids ear” kind of acting out. I think that my short fuse has more to do with my failure on my part to  fully understand them rather than gross misbehavior on their part. What I’m really trying to grasp here is not “why can’t these kids sit still?” But more “when they can’t sit still, what makes them want to kick a recycle bin around the room or toss magnets at the learning target?” I think if I had a better understanding of what drives those behaviors, I could deal with them more productively. Suggestions?

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