HOW SCHOOLS WORK

Bill nails the nothingness that is and has been Arne Duncan’s contributions to education outside of the elite world he, Obama, et al. inhabit.

Bill Ayers

If you pick up Arne Duncan’s How Schools Work hoping to learn something about, well, unsurprisingly I suppose, about “how schools work,” you’ll be sorely disappointed. There’s no policy prescription here, no substantive analysis whatsoever, and no actual accounts or examples of how schools work. Instead we’re treated to random stories that circulate around several stuttering themes: Duncan’s dismay and then anger when poor kids are told they’re doing OK by school people when in reality they don’t have the skills to go to college; his encounters with enraged parents that happily end when they chill out after he shows them that his heart is true and his intentions pure; and his insistent defense of “big data” and high stakes standardized tests when promoting his preferred school “reform” goals.

The subtitle isn’t especially helpful either: “An Inside Account of Failure and Success from One of the Nation’s Longest-Serving Secretaries of…

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Asking Better Questions of Ourselves

School’s out!! As we reflect the past year, and plan next year’s lessons (come on, you know who you are…), can you answer These questions?

This is a repost from One of Thirty Voices. I teach high school students mathematics, and my goal is to rekindle a love of learning (especially mathematics) through connections: with students, with parents, and with all of the lively interconnected mathematics! I would love your feedback!

Algebra 2, the Gateway Course

educationrealist

I’ve been teaching a ton of algebra 2 the past three years.  I squawk periodically, and the admins give me variety for a semester or so, but then the classes come back. Back in 2016, I taught 5 classes, all of them full, over the two semester block courses, or about 160 kids. Last year, I had just one course of 30 kids. This year, I’ve already taught three and one coming up.  I also get a steady flow of trigonometry classes–not as many, but three or four every year.  I’ve requested more pre-calculus every year;  they’ll give me one every so often, like a bone to a cranky dog.

In my early years here, I taught far more pre-calculus. From spring 2013 to spring 2014, I taught five pre-calc courses. From fall 2015 to now, I’ve had three.

Why? Because Chuck got his way. Chuck came to our school…

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Circle puzzle

​Here’s a lovely puzzle I saw on Brilliant.org this week:

It’s a nice little workout. I did it entirely in my head and that is my challenge to you. Do it, go on. Do it now….

Scroll down for my answer….

Have you done it? You better have…..
I looked at this picture and my frat thought was that the blue and gold areas are congruent. Thus the entire picture has an area of 70. There are 4 overlaps, each has an area of 5, so the total area of 5 circles is 90. Leaving each circle having an area of 18.

This is a nice mental work out and I feel it could build proprtional reasoning skills in my students. I am hoping to try it on some next week.

Did you manage the puzzle? Did you do it a different way?

This post was cross posted to cavmaths here.

Differentiating Questions By Removing Information

While checking the work of a year 11 student on Friday I came across a question that could have been a great one for the higher GCSE students to practice their skills together and also their selection of which mathematics to use.

The question was to find the area of this triangle:

A great question. One that to you or I is straightforward but that would take GCSE level students and below a bit of thinking and let’s them hone their skills.

The way to tackle it is to use Pythagoras’s Theorem to form an equation, solve for x then find the area. I feel is beneficial as it combines Pythagoras’s Theorem with a decent amount of algebra then includes the find the area bit at the end.

In this case though, that wasn’t the question. There was more information on offer and the question was:

Which is still a fairly nice form and solve an equation problem.

3x + 1 + 3x + x – 1 = 56
7x = 56
x = 8
A = 0.5×7×24 = 84

There is a niceness to this question that goes beyond the question itself.  It shows us a great way of differentiating within lessons. Just be leaving out a tiny portion of the information, in this case the perimeter, we can make the question much harder. This idea is something I’ve been working on in various places. Mechanics questions can be made much easier by providing a diagram, for example.

Have you used questions in a similar way? If so I’d love to see them, please do get in touch.

Cross-posted to Cavmaths here.

Is one solution more elegant?

Cross-posted to Cavmaths here.

Earlier this week I wrote this post on mathematical elegance and whether or not it should have marks awarded to it in A level examinations, then bizarrely the next day in my GCSE class I came across a question that could be answered many ways. In fact it was answered in a few ways by my own students.

Here’s the question – it’s from the November Edexcel Non-calculator higher paper:

I like this question, and am going to look at the two ways students attempted it and a third way I think I would have gone for. Before you read in I’d love it if you have a think about how you would go about it and let me know.

Method 1

Before I go into this method I should state that the students weren’t working through the paper, they were completing some booklets I’d made based on questions taken from towards the end of recent exam papers q’s I wanted them to get some practice working on the harder stuff but still be coming at the quite cold (ie not “here’s a booklet on sine and cosine rule,  here’s one on vectors,” etc). As these books were mixed the students had calculators and this student hadn’t noticed it was marked up as a non calculator question.

He handed me his worked and asked to check he’d got it right.  I looked, first he’d used the equation to find points A (3,0) and D (0,6) by subbing 0 in for y and x respectively. He then used right angled triangle trigonometry to work out the angle OAD, then worked out OAP from 90 – OAD and used trig again to work out OP to be 1.5, thus getting the correct answer of 7.5. I didn’t think about the question too much and I didn’t notice that it was marked as non-calculator either. I just followed his working, saw that it was all correct and all followed itself fine and told him he’d got the correct answer.

Method 2

Literally 2 minutes later another student handed me her working for the same question and asked if it was right, I looked and it was full of algebra. As I looked I had the trigonometry based solution in my head so starter to say “No” but then saw she had the right answer so said “Hang on, maybe”.

I read the question fully then looked at her working. She had recognised D as the y intercept of the equation so written (0,6) for that point then had found A by subbing y=0 in to get (3,0). Next she had used the fact that the product of two perpendicular gradients is -1 to work put the gradient of the line through P and A is 1/2.

She then used y = x/2 + c and point A (3,0) to calculate c to be -1/2, which she recognised as the Y intercept, hence finding 5he point P (0,-1.5) it then followed that the answer was 7.5.

A lovely neat solution I thought, and it got me thinking as to which way was more elegant, and if marks for style would be awarded differently. I also thought about which way I would do it.

Method 3

I’m fairly sure that if I was looking at this for the first time I would have initially thought “Trigonometry”, then realised that I can essential bypass the trigonometry bit using similar triangles. As the axes are perpendicular and PAD is a right angle we can deduce that ODA = OAP and OPA = OAD. This gives us two similar triangles.

Using the equation as in both methods above we get the lengths OD = 6 and OA = 3. The length OD in triangle OAD corresponds to the OA in OAP, and OD on OAD corresponds to OP, this means that OP must be half of OA (as OA is half of OD) and is as such 1.5. Thus the length PD is 7.5.

Method 4

This question had me intrigued, so i considered other avenues and came up with Pythagoras’s Theorem.

Obviously AD^2 = 6^2 + 3^2 = 45 (from the top triangle). Then AP^2 = 3^2 + x^2 (where x = OP). And PD = 6 + x so we get:

(6 + x)^2 = 45 + 9 + x^2

x^2 + 12x + 36 = 54 + x^2

12x = 18

x = 1.5

Leading to a final answer of 7.5 again.

Another nice solution. I don’t know which I like best, to be honest. When I looked at the rest of the class’s work it appears that Pythagoras’s Theorem was the method that was most popular, followed by trigonometry then similar triangles. No other student had used the perpendicular gradients method.

I thought it might be interesting to check the mark scheme:

All three methods were there (obviously the trig method was missed due to it being a non calculator paper). I wondered if the ordering of the mark scheme suggested the preference of the exam board, and which solution they find more elegant. I love all the solutions, and although I think similar triangles is the way I’d go at it if OD not seen it, I think I prefer the perpendicular gradients method.

Did you consider this? Which way would you do the question? Which way would your students? Do you tuink one is more elegant? Do you think that matters? I’d love to know, and you can tell me in the comments or via social media!

The Best Worksheet I have ever (re)written

Sometimes a Professional Learning workshop can make you think. Sometimes they can make you so sleepy that you question whether there was any caffeine in that triple shot latte latte you just finished. Sometimes they can make you question how you teach and excite you to try new things. Luckily for me, I went to Amie Albrecht’s sessions at the 2016 MASA Conference just over a week ago. I’ve been trying some great things that have streamed through her twitter feed (@nomad_penguin), which she shared with teachers in her workshop. I have recently blogged about how I’m using Mary Bourassa‘s (@WODBmath) Which One Doesn’t Belong problems (wodb.ca/). I have transformed four problems that will (hopefully) magnify the amount of thought my students will have to apply to answer them using Fawn Nguyen’s (@fawnpnguyen) Reversing the Question method (fawnnguyen.com/reversing-the-question/).

Here they are before and after the makeovers:

Before:

After:

Now, apart from changing the font, I have completely changed the problem. In fact, I haven’t changed anything about the problem at all. What I have changed, however, is the way the problem is presented.

Something I find that I talk with so many other maths teachers is whether textbooks are a good idea or not. I am reluctant to share a love or hate opinion for a specific resource or type of resource as I think there is more to how it is used than the value I place on it. As a teacher, I love textbooks. As a student, I loathed them. Why? I love having a collection of problems that progress through content with varying levels of difficulty and solutions at the back.m. I mainly use them as a resource to get ideas and, occasionally, to copy questions from for a test. I loathed them as a student because I was one of those weirdos who liked the messier problems. I didn’t want everything served to me on a “silver platter” where solving the problem was a process of taking the numbers (or “mathsy” information) and plugging them into a function or calculator to spit out a purely numerical value. So, I’m trying to be more and more like the teacher I wanted when I was a student.

Here are the other three other problems that I took off the silver platter for my students (before and after):

*downloadable worksheet here.

Edit: The Ambiguous Case

Before:

After:

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Before:

After:

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Before:

After:

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Before (note: I am just about to introduce the Cosine rule, but haven’t yet):

After:

Cross-posted to whenwillineedthis.

Lovely, simple, trigonometric puzzle

Sometimes a puzzle can look complicated,  but be rather simple (see this geometry puzzle). I love puzzles like this and I particularly like to test them out on classes to try and build their problem solving ability.

Just now, I saw the following trig puzzle from brilliant.org and I love it! It’s amazing!

Have you done it yet?

How long did it take you to spot it?

My initial thought was, it’s got three terms,  it’s bound to be a disguised quadratic that will factorise. A few seconds later I realised that it wasn’t. I saw the – sin^4 and suspected a difference of two squares but then a few seconds later it became clear.

If you haven’t spotted it yet, have a look at the expression rearranged:

Sin^6 + sin^4 cos^2 – sin^4

See it now? What if I rewrite it as:

Sin^4 sin^2 + sin^4 cos^2 – sin^4

I’m sure you have seen it now, but to be complete,  take the common factor of the first two terms:

Sin^4 (sin^2 + cos^2) – sin^4

Obviously sin^2 + cos^2 = 1, so we’re left with:

Sin^4 – sin^4 = 0

A lovely, satisfying, simple answer to a little brain teaser. Hope you liked it as much as I did.

Cross-posted to Cavmaths here.

Giving Them Nothing

Monday, my chemistry students started their semester final: a three-week, single-partner, no-outside-communication, all-hands-on-deck lab practical. I handed them a stack of papers and told them that I expected to see polished write-ups in three weeks.

Okay, so I don’t give them nothing. They can use virtually anything printed, including their lab notebooks, the textbook, the Internet… Other than people.

But I didn’t tell them exactly how to accomplish the experiments or how to write them up. This is throwing a lot of them for a loop. It’s making them think a little too hard. I had two pairs, who, after pouring a chemical in a beaker and watching it sink to the bottom of a beaker, discuss how to get a chemical to dissolve. After about 5-6 minutes of contemplating various heating implements, acids, and catalysts, I was afraid they were going to actually hurt themselves: I handed them a glass stir rod.

But the thing is, as I struggle to not talk or nudge kids in particular directions (which makes me think about how much/little I do during the rest of the year), they’re realizing how much they rely on being told what to do. They’re finally thinking about what to do rather than what I say. And to do this, they have to ask questions of themselves (and their partners).

I’m starting to think about how to give more goals, give fewer questions. It’s kind of a riff off of Dan Meyer talking about removing questions from textbook problems to make things more interesting/compelling/think-y. [Hmmm… curriculua as a state function? Many paths to get to the end?]

Cross-posted to my blog.

An interesting area puzzle

Here’s an interesting little question for you:

Have you worked it out? How long did it take you to see it?

It took me a few seconds at least, I had screenshotted the picture and was reaching for the pencil when the penny dropped, and that’s why I thought it was an interesting question.

The answer is, of course,  100pi. This follows easily from the information you have as the diagonal of the rectangle is clearly a radius – the top left is on the circumference and the bottom right is on the centre.

So why didn’t I spot it immediately?

I think the reason for me not spotting it instantly might be the misdirection in the question, the needless info that the height of the rectangle had me thinking about 6, 8, 10 triangles before I had even discovered what the question was.

I see this in students quite often at exam time, they can get confused about what they’re doing and it links to this piece I wrote earlier about analogy mistakes. The difference is I wasn’t constrained by my first instinct but all too often students can be and they can worry that it must be solved in the manner they first thought of.

Earlier today a student was working on an FP1 paper and he was struggling with a parabola question, he had done exactly this, he had assumed one thing which wasn’t the right way and got hung up in it. When he showed me the problem my instinct was the same as his, but when I hit the same dead end he had I stepped back and said “what else do we know”, then saw the right answer. I’m hoping that by seeing me do this he will realise that first instincts aren’t always correct.

I’m going to try this puzzle on all my classes tomorrow and Friday and see if they can manage it!

How quickly did you see the answer? Do you experience this sort of thinking from your students? I’d love to hear any similar experiences.

Cross-posted to Cavmaths here.