We started class watching a video all about brain research and how we learn. The big ideas the students got from it were:
1. Everyone can learn math! 2. The brain is a muscle. It can grow and shrink as we use or don't use it. 3. The deeper we think, the more our brain grows. 4. Whether or not we are a math person is determined by our experiences and beliefs. You can watch the video here Next we had a discussion about what we like and don't like people to say and do while working in groups. The kids came up with some great ideas and I compiled them on to posters that we will use as our group norms throughout the rest of the year. Finally, we put our newly compiled norms in to practice by working on the Four 4's problem. The challenge is to create the numbers 1-4 using exactly four 4's and any operations. The students came up with possible operations that can be used, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponents and square rooting. I was impressed with how many students came up with the knowledge of square roots as that standard shows up in 8th grade! An example of one of the solutions is 4*4+4/4 = 17 I love this challenge because it gets kids thinking deeply about numbers as well as reviews what they have learned about order of operations in previous years. Most classes only had about 5 minutes to work on this problem, so I'll give them more time to work on it tomorrow.
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June 2016
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