Sick of reading and rereading the various classroom and school rules, I wanted to dive into some mathematics lest I drive myself and my kids totally nuts. So I decided to use Christopher Danielson's Tootsie Roll-sharing problem from his #TMC13 presentation, along with some of his "fun facts" background, as a first math day diagnostic activity and as a platform for introducing my new norms and rubric for collaboration.
Even though I felt like I was just throwing together a slide show launch during my first-period prep, it worked incredibly well!
My Keynote slides and a PDF version of the slide deck are on the Math Teacher Wiki.
Here it is in a nutshell:
• Visualize a 6-ootsie Tootsie
• Now imagine 4 kids who want to share it equally and completely.
• Can your group come up with AT LEAST TWO WAYS to accomplish this?
Both the 8th graders and the 6th graders had a lot of pretty deep conversations about whether you were thinking of sharing it in terms of number of ootsies or in terms of parts of a Tootsie. Wholes and parts, plus funny-sounding words and the chance to introduce the word synecdoche.
One of the nicest things about doing this was that it helped a lot of kids see that "complicated" and "deeper" are not necessarily the same thing.
What's not to like?
Thanks so much for sharing this interesting task. I have it filed until my 'to-try' items. And thanks for inspiring me to look up the word synecdoche.
ReplyDeleteThis looks like a great activity. Did you have them do any sort of extension/generalizations? How long did it take to run the lesson as is for the 8th graders?
ReplyDeleteHi Dan — Thanks! After all the lessons of yours I have used over the years, it's nice to be able to return the favor. :)
DeleteI used this on Day 2 as a "getting to know you" and "practicing group work norms" activity that was math-centered, so I did not actually plan any extensions or generalizations. It took my 8th graders (different classes) between 30 and 40 minutes to work through. If a group came up with two ways to share very quickly, I tasked them with devising as many ways to share as they could in the remaining time. For a 9th grade Algebra 1 regular or remedial, I would probably have had groups make a poster and present to the class.
I'm sure there are a ton of other extensions you could create. You could even have them generalize a rule for figuring this out, depending on their previous experience.
Let me know how it goes!
- Elizabeth (@cheesemonkeysf)