Pump Fakes and Starbursts

How to demonstrate the idea that word problems throw extraneous information at you? Bring in the pump fake! During our math lit hour this morning as people were going over rules and procedures, I began to daydream about better ways to invest our students in my lesson. It occurred to me to get physical. At the beginning of my time, I questioned the class as to who played basketball. A young man raised his hand and I asked him to rise, step forward, and show me his best defensive stance. After being entirely unimpressed I said, really man, I am going to get by you like none other if you don't D me up better. So he got lower and I pretended that I had the ball. I took it to the right and he followed. Going up for a pump fake, I said that he jumped out of his shoes and I dunked on him. But in round two, he knew it was coming so that he could say "get out of here" to my shot attempt. I was the test and he was the student. Tests are going to throw lots of pump fakes at you as you go through them. As the student, you must see those coming and react accordingly so that you are best able to defend yourself.

I asked our students to write down how they see their lives in 15 years - family, home, car, travel, job, etc. Sharing aloud, one student remarked that she and her current baby would have a 3 bedroom house and a porche. Another student pronounced that she would live in a million dollar mansion and travel all over the world. With the great help of an old middle school math teacher of mine, we broke down exactly how much more money per day you make by staying in school and one day graduating from college as opposed to not finishing high school. The students were not overtly impressed; however, I think that it demonstrated well to them the monetary value in continuing their education through college.

Tomorrow I teach perfect squares. A fellow teacher imparted to a group earlier that she intended to use starburts for this exercise so that they could have a clear visual of what a perfect square really is. I decided that this sounded pretty cool and made it my personal mission to get some darn starbursts for my students. After an incredibly inefficient, two-hour session at school processing (more finger printing for a new school district), I set off for the gas station that we always pass on the way to school, hoping for starbursts. Eureka! I now have a full ziploc bag (useful for many things!) full of colorful squares ready to help students remember what a perfect square is.