It's Saturday, and I was at a math inservice today. After initial grumbling (wa wa wa Saturday ... wa wa wa school hasn't even started ... wa wa wa pity party), it turned out to be a very useful day. We discussed and saw examples of what made preAP assessment questions of "preAP" caliber (options chosen from multiple representations, using variables and symbols in the question instead of all numbers as coefficients and constants, testing future topics in a scaffolded way,...). I also talked with people who had taught block schedule in HS math and got some good ideas.
I loved this analogy:
Think of a student and his/her learning as a candle being made. You have to keep dipping the wick in wax, and some of it sticks the first time and as you keep dipping, more and more of it gloms onto the wick and eventually you have a finished product. ... so basically another way of plugging for a continual refresher of all topics even though they may not be in the "current" unit, so that the more times a student sees something, the more chance the knowledge have of sticking.
And finally a student joke (old?) that still makes me giggle:
Knock, knock.
Who's there?
Interrupting cow.
Inter .... moooo.
Have you ever heard the knock-knock joke "interrupting starfish" where you grab the person's face and squeeze as they begin to say "interrupting starfish who?"?
ReplyDeleteOh excellent! No. That caused me to burst out laughing. Thanks for sharing, and I'll have to pass it along (mwa ha ha).
ReplyDeleteMs. Cookie