Linear Patterns: Flickr in Practice

With all these posts about Flickr, I figured I might actually start a classroom blog where I post a problem of the day (similar to think again!) several times a week and have my students respond through the comment link. I was able to get in a couple of these this week.

My first impression is that it's going to take the kids a while to get used to the routine--the first problem took the whole period in each class and the second problem took about 25 minutes! But doing this is going to help me achieve a few goals:

1. Get my students to write about math more often (when this is a requirement).
2. Get my students to think about how they are solving problems.
3. Elicit somewhat of a classroom discussion through the blog, almost like a silent discussion. After posting, students actually want to read about how other students solved the problems. This has similar benefits to an actual discussion--students get to read about the different strategies that one can take to get a solution to a math problem.
4. Discover an effecient form of assessment. When I scrolled through the students' responses to the problems, it was very easy to see where there were misunderstandings and note them so that I could correct them later.
   
5. Review prior learning.
   

I plan to continue this through the end of the year. Check back for more problems.

Categories: classroom teacher math