Getting Students to Struggle (and Engage) With Math

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Getting Students to Struggle (and Engage) With
Math

• Geoff Krall
• emergentmath.wordpress.com

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My Exponential Growth and Decay project
Local!
Relevant!
Authentic!
21st Century Skills!
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My Exponential Growth and Decay project
9.756 sq in/101.6832 sq in 0.0959
Wheres the Math?
About 10 of the final product included
mathematics???
2. 466 sq in
1.37
7.29 sq in 2.466 sq in9.756 sq in
1.8
7.29 sq in
1.62
5.12 in
4.5
101.6832 sq in
19.86 in
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Objective

• Promote Mathematical conflict...
• .by any means necessary.
• Resources and links at
• emergentmath.wordpress.com

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A conflict-centric approach to mathematics

• Malcolm Swan Conflict and Discussion Approach
  to Mathematics

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• Evidence of good mathematical conflict.

• Evidence of bad (or no) mathematical conflict.

• Students talking about math.
• A debate about why / what answer?
• Little teacher direction
• Relevance being able to make connections
  between everyday experience
• Task offers multiple possible solutions
• Task links several mathematical concepts
• All student levels are engaged
• Emphasis on process
• Arguing different methods about solving the
  problem.

• Sleeping
• Answers are on the board
• Notetaking
• No surprises
• Students are quiet little islands
• Computations
• Teachers throat hurts theyre doing all the
  work
• Lack of words / word walls
• Students not helping each other
• No questions

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Using Problems to create conflict in a PBL
Classroom
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Other task types to Promote Conflict
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Classifying or Ordering Things
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Odd one out
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Evaluating Truthiness
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Evaluating Student Work
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Matching
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Two ways to a conflict-centric approach
Activities
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What would I have done differently?
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• Formative Assessment
• Focus on modeling with another scenario

Having Kittens math.mapshell.org
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End of Class Debrief

• Geoff Krall gkrall_at_newtechnetwork.org
• emergentmath.wordpress.com

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Exit Ticket (2 minute assessment)
One thing that could be made better
!
One thing that you want to make sure not to
forget that you learned today
!
?
One thing that became clear a lightbulb moment
?
One thing you still have a question about