Everything is relative
This is from one of my 5th grade groups today and I found it very nice, I hope you like it.
We were working with decimal numbers and I was trying to emphasize the importance of expressing the actions in an accurate way- the link between action and its expression is quite an issue at this age, weather the action is done by them or required from them.
So, I was trying to make them say we place the comma 1 position more to the left or to the right instead of to the end (or beginning) of the number. I told them a funny true story about one student who was so used to place the comma more "towards the door" or "towards the window", that he could not solve the exercises at home because the door and the window were not in the same directions. So, I said, we must refer to left and right, because they are not relative, therefore we will always be precise.
Then, I prepared to go further with the lesson and asked: can someone please wipe the first blackboard? as they have 2 boards in the room. And they asked: which one is the first?
I found this brilliant, especially for 11 year olds. :)
3 comments:
that was a clever question!
One of the main reasons why some love Maths is that, in a relative world, it offers structure, order, certainty, universal laws. But Maths too can seem dazzling sometimes: in certain coordinates, circles and squares mix, and I remember a teacher of mine starting his first class like this: "Let's call CIRCLE a line or a circle"- which is logical if you imagine a line as an "unfolded" circle.
Have a day with no uncertainties! :)
Today, I told my other 5th grade group that if they did not work they would get a mark equal to the date in the calendar- that meant 3. One boy said: I hope this means equal to the sum of the digits, because it's 3.03.2011. The sum would have been 10- our highest mark. I was pleased to hear this, even if I don't encourage them very much to joke during classes, because it meant he was used to notice numbers and play with them.
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