Pi R Scared

  The norm in recent years seems to be that students feel they have to be perfect and get every question correct all of the time.  Trying to be perfect and never messing up seems to have led to very stressed students in the classroom.  What happens when they do make a mistake?  How do they react if they don't get a 100%? During the 2nd semester, I started going over the most missed questions as a class. Typically, I would make notes on the student's paper about the missed question.  I pulled up the questions and we discussed why it was missed, how you could get that wrong answer, and what we would do differently.  This may seem simple but it started to help students see that they weren't alone.  Second, it helps them analyze what happened to get the incorrect answer.  I believe this is just as important in the understanding process.  For example, with reflections we looked at the distractors of going over the wrong axis or writing an ordered pair as (y,x).   After reviewing

  Teaching reflections can be a challenge for some students.  I found that pulling in the way you fold a paper from elementary school is helpful.  Check out the video below for tips.

  During the month of February, we started reviewing for our State test.  As we learned new concepts and reviewed previous ones we looked at why the rules work and how did they work. This took time, it time that many may say was a waste or could have been used elsewhere.    For struggling students or students who aren't great at memorizing this is very helpful. I find that in math students are told this is the rule and you need to learn it.  The reason behind the rule isn't explained or shown.  I've been challenging my students to ask questions, seek to know how or why it works, and not just believe something is true because I said it was.   This had led to great discussions.  For example, why does minus a negative change to a plus sign.  You've probably heard two negatives make a positive but why does it work.  We spent a day looking at why the integer rules work.  If they know the reason behind it, it helps as they are working out a problem or building on this skill.