The past few home nuggets have elicited voices of concern regarding the difficulty level and expectations for assignments from the book Moving Straight Ahead. It is my hope that the following factors will serve to reinforce any insecurities or anxieties that the home nuggets may have caused.
1. No student should ever come to class without a home nugget with the excuse "I didn't understand the lesson." As all my Focus Correction Areas are archived on this blog, they will show that the tendency is to ask the student to simply attempt all problems and explain their reasoning for the solutions they provide. It is unlikely that I will demand students to turn in a lesson with only correct solutions unless they have had adequate time to master a skill. (Like this weekend's home nugget)
2. Our curriculum is designed to challenge students who are already math proficient as well as attract students who are math phobic. How? It is an exploratory, investigations-based curriculum that asks students to make decisions that require common sense, good computational and reasoning ability and to justify their thought process. This is no longer the sterile and seemingly non-applicable math of yesterday. In other words, the home nuggets are meant to be challenging because we value our students' intellect and capacity and offer them support if they should require it.
3. Math is meant to make sense out of a 'messy' world. The situations, scenarios and problems we face as adults are rarely packaged and neatly presented to us for solving. The times require that students make practical use of math to problem solve, which essentially means they should be able to find order and patterns in things that seem 'messy.'
LAST REMINDERS!!!
- Be on the lookout for a sample home nugget lesson that students will receive on Monday. Students will be given both correct and incorrect versions of a sample problem to help them understand how to complete problems on home nuggets.
- Since students ask about when they should provide explanations for home nugget problems, I will indicate in class with a lowercase x and on this blog with red lettering, those problems that require that students provide explanations.
- The first term is over this Friday October 27!!!!
Home Nugget #30
Assigned on Friday October 20, 2006
Due Monday October 23, 2006
In Moving Straight Ahead
Page 44 # 5 a, b, c
Page 46 # 14 a, b
Page 47 # 15 a, b, c, d
Focus Correction Areas
4 points: One problem checked for correct solutions
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