You probably didn't notice, but I didn't go in last week. Today I'm back, so you get a new blog post.
Grading quizzes today, the one salient observation that popped out of the student responses was that they still don't know what a Range is. What is the range of the function y=-7? Answer? -7. What did students put? Everything from 0, to all reals, to x is in [-7,7], to my favorite: -7>0. Maybe 5 out of the 40 or so tests I saw answered -7. Everyone probably already knows my attitude towards math vocabulary, but given that I had to double check what the domain and range were again today I couldn't help but mention this once more Let it be known, all students who got that wrong, I didn't feel good taking the red pen to your paper. I feel for ya.
In 4th hour, I had an opportunity for more one-on-one tutoring with students. One had turned in a blank quiz after about 5 seconds. We absconded to the far corner of the room where we went through some examples. After about 10 minutes, I revealed to him that our examples were really the quiz questions and that he had just gotten all of them right. "Sure is a shame you gave up so fast..." He thought this was pretty funny and I'm not sure if he spent the rest of class paying attention, but at least spent he wasn't causing trouble.
Not a whole lot else to report, so I'll shut up. Later!
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2 comments:
Eric,
I am glad that you were able to work with the student individually. This student probably has had problems with math and is very unsure of himself. Sometimes students think it is better not to try than to try and be wrong. Continue to check in with this student and ask to see his work. Reinforce postively all that he does correctly and for his mistakes say something like a small error but you did all this other correctly. Try to build his confidence.
Why is range necessary for an engineer to know? What would happen if an engineer made the mistake many students made? Maybe this can lead to another way to help students learn range.
Carol Cramer
The range is necessary for an engineer to know because its definition is perennially asked for on standardized tests and engineers need to score well on these- especially the math parts.
Knowing the definitions of domain and range isn't really relevant to real life or practicing engineering.
If an engineer made the mistakes the students made, it is quite possible they'd end up pursuing a PhD at a top 10 engineering institution, humorously trying to convince people the "range" isn't a big deal without being rude.
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