I love these, and will go on a run of watching 3-4 a day for a week, then leaving off for months. This one is fun, because there is some sense to what the students do to solve it. After all, every other problem in their math book, or that the teacher gives, is solved by manipulating the given numbers. "There is not enough information to solve the problem" is one of those things that they never see until testing week , when it shows up on a multiple choice. This is also true of those "Both a and c are true" or "check all answers that are true." In real life, those are possible answers, but in teaching math or anything else, there is a strong tendency to ask for a single answer, as in Jeopardy. It simplifies things. It's cleaner. It's neater. When teaching, you are trying to isolate a particular operation and make sure the student knows how to get it right. The more complicated "some of this and some of that" answers can come later.
But sometimes later never comes. Oops.
It likely is a measure of intelligence that some students encounter this new twist and adjust to it quickly enough to get the answers right - and store the information for next year.
No comments:
Post a Comment