Heart of the City by Steenz for April 12, 2018

yeah, gotta loathe these pop quizzes

People may complain about word problems, but they are actually a very valuable thing to learn. It teaches you how to take the information that you know, and arrange it in a way to calculate the thing you are trying to figure out. It’s a very real world thing to learn.

Love Heart’s expressions. This teacher is bound to make sure she never looks forward to a substitute again.

I think Gary Larson’s Far Side had a panel about Hell’s Library. The books were all “Story Problems”…

When you become an adult they are called: your every day money conundrums …

; – )

I teach math, and most of what I assign can be classified as word problems, multi-step, and the full-page finale to every lesson know as the Performance Task. But I remind my students from the start of the year that “word problems are typically the EASIER ones,” and I’m not joking. It really turns out to be true. Each time they see math folded into a realistic situation, they have to think critically to reveal what data is needed, what is irrelevant, and what tools are necessary to solve the problem. These skills, NOT the formulas and algorithms, are what will give them key advantages throughout their lives. I always have plenty of doubters at the start of the year, but somewhere between October and March they come to agree with my logic. My kids don’t have to like Math; I just want them to learn not to fear it.

Heart’s face imploded in panel 2. An understandable reaction.