Ok. I'll admit it. I have the perplexity fairy and I have Dan Meyer to thank. Click here for some context. Basically that means there is hardly a room I enter, a drive I take, or a conversation I have that I'm not looking for a perplex situation. The perplexity fairy has whispered and lead me to do such things in the past:
At the end of the day, the question is, "What are the best aodmath.com prompts?" Dan has recently posed the question in this manner:
- Use a blow torch to melt candle sticks at midnight in my living room thinking my wife wouldn't wake up (She did and was mad)
- Show up on a high school campus dressed as Zor-Fro (not even close to Halloween) with a camera crew to film an infinite sequence lesson on the football field
- Speak with managers at places like In-N-Out and Gulf Clubs to use their facilities to capture perplexity. One golf course manager told me I was a "nerd" after sharing my idea with him. Score!!!!
At the end of the day, the question is, "What are the best aodmath.com prompts?" Dan has recently posed the question in this manner:
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I recently have been writing units for the Integrated Mathematics III class for my district and so I have been studying Logarithms and Exponential functions. One of the performance tasks I incorporated involves a CSI investigation and using Newton's Law of cooling. So I started asking random folks, "If I boiled water and let it sit on the counter, how long do you think it will take to cool to room temperature?" The range of answers I received was from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours. I really tried to keep a straight face because I had already done a little experiment at my house:
Simply, my favorite AOD prompt:
- Messes with students intuition - making it difficult to choose a side
- Choosing agree or disagree are both viable options
- Build momentum
Messing with Students Intuition
In this case, having a prompt that will mess with students intuition may look something like this, "The water will reach room temperature first after 3.5 hours." At face value, this probably seems 100% wrong. So most students would probably choose disagree. However, most students have never done this experiment before so the prompt will hopefully have them second guess their response. Once the answer is derived, this can lead to a powerful conversation on why it would take so long and what type of function it models.
Agree and Disagree are Viable Solutions
Consider the equation below with these directions: Based on your work with logarithmic expressions, determine whether you AGREE or DISAGREE with the statement. Convince your neighbor you are correct.
This may not be flashy or as intriguing as a video, however, you will find students on both sides arguing with conviction they are correct. I purposely create this problem so both agree and disagree are correct. My goal here is to have students come to the conclusion that they are both right. Wait until you see the light bulbs go off in class when the debating begins...
Build Momentum
I want to lead students down a path and have students respond to an AOD prompt at the right time. An example of this would be a coin is flipped four times and they all land on heads. My AOD statement: "The 5th flip will land on heads." It may take a number of video cuts to get this one right but will lead to rich dialog with the students.
Lastly my one and only least favorite AOD prompt takes any problem and slap AOD on it. No bueno.
For instance, the equation below:
For instance, the equation below:
Now tack on these directions: Do you agree or disagree that x = -2/3? Lamo! Boring! It's not simply enough to throw AOD in the directions. As listed above, you need to tap in and mess with the students intuition, create problems so both agree and disagree are correct, and set the problem up so it builds momentum.