Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Textbook Skills

I had a major scare yesterday after school during tutoring. My kids had a test the following day, and the homework I assigned was 1/2 odd problems (answers in the back) and 1/2 even on all the skills they needed for their test. One of the students was working an odd numbered problem, and then asked me if it was right. I told her to check the answer in the back. This was a total revelation to her. She didn't know the odd numbered answers existed, and after I told her, she couldn't track them down.

Then another student asked me how to do another problem. I asked her what the directions were and had her read them to me. Then I asked her to flip to the start of this particular section of problems. She didn't know what to do. We figured that out. Then I asked her to find an example they work through that is similar to that problem. We struggled to do that, too.

So, their homework tonight is a Textbook Scavenger Hunt (we use the Holt book).

5 comments:

  1. This sounds like a great idea! I'll have to adapt to my textbook and give it a try.

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  2. Would you believe that I teach Developmental math at the college level and they have the same problems? I did a similar first day activity with the graphing calculator. I think I'm going to adapt your idea as well.
    Thanks!

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  3. Yeesh. I guess that doesn't surprise me. I'm collecting the work tomorrow, so I'll see how they did. I think I want to revise it to have some sort of summary questions to make them process what and why I made them do this.

    Ms. Cookie

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  4. Anonymous1:14 AM

    Yep, great idea - I'm gonna use it too, and pass it on to colleagues. Thanks!!!!

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  5. Thanks for this post! It will be perfect to get my kids to understand how they're supposed to use their book as a tool to help them, not just a vessel to deliver the homework problems!

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