Anyone who remembers the periodic table via Tom Lehrer’s wonderful song “The Elements” (below) will also appreciate this musical mnemonic ditty about the Pythagorean theorem, composed by a high school boy from Pendleton County (KY) High School. Does anyone else have a great one to contribute? (If you send yours in, we’ll send you a complimentary copy of Fires in the Mind.) And tell us: Does this kind of practice work for your students?
Peggy Hart, a teacher from Massachusetts, writes in to propose a homework assignment with a social element, in order to draw students into identifying sentence fragments and run-on sentences. “We are always asking students to self-edit their work for spelling, punctuation, run-on sentences, and the like,” she writes. But instead of having them practice on [...]
Here’s a True-False test where the kids don’t see the questions! Starts them thinking about probability (and tests).
I believe mnemonics is a powerful learning – and recall – strategy; so much so that I blogged about this (see post), which includes one I created – GGSC – a mnemonic which is an adaptation of Polya’s approach to problem solving.
G – Goal : What is the problem/question
G – Given: What do we know to help us solve it
S – Solve
C – Check: How do we know we are right?
cheers,
Malyn
Malyn, thanks! I went to your blog and found so much of interest–for example, your thoughtful post called “Problems vs. Exercises” is a great example of encouraging deliberate practice by having students break a math problem into parts. Hope you’ll keep sharing your on-the-ground insights!