Challenging math problem
Sometimes I think that we don’t challenge our students with interesting and difficult problems and projects. I also think we need to be careful on wrapping up projects in one class lesson. Giving additional days, allows students to think further about class activities, and allows them to approach each endeavor in fresh ways if they have become frustrated. Additional time also allows teacher to look over student work and make appropriate suggestions.
I have heard about “Locker Problems” but have never seen them on the internet. Perhaps because they are geared towards an older student, teachers think it will be too hard. I think that this project will be an excellent opportunity to challenge my students later in the year.
This project was developed by:
*NOTE: This lesson was developed by Suzanne Alejandre. At the time she was a middle school mathematics and computer teacher at Frisbie Middle School in Rialto, CA. She left the classroom in 2000 to join the Math Forum staff full time. A collection of her lessons/activities can be found on the Math Forum @ Drexel site.
Credit given to the Math Forum at Drexel University for making it available on their site: http://mathforum.org.
January 5th, 2012 at 8:54 am
Wow – that is a challenging problem. I’m trying to incorporate more challenging problems in my centers. Part of the problem is keeping the groups organized.
January 5th, 2012 at 5:20 pm
I have found that challenging problems have to be interesting to the students. I tried the NFL franchise worth problems a while back, and while I thought that it was interesting, I don’t think that our students enjoyed it. However, I just finished an ETA problem with geoboards, geoboard paper to sketch, and iPods with video cameras, and I kept my students busy for 3 days in 25 minute sessions. However, I did take their work home each night to see how much each group completed and how well they understood the content. The last day, I enjoyed the Big Picture questions because I was able to correct some misconceptions.
As far as keeping my student’s organized, I try to keep the groups the same and try not to offer too many activities at once. One good project being worked on seperately at each group is much better than lots of projects with no order.