The Chain Rule is probably one of the hardest topics to teach in the Calculus & Vectors course and it is one that I find many students have a hard time grasping it. Probably because there are so many steps and once the functions get a little more complex, there is more room for error.
Rachel came up with such a unique and simplistic way of teaching the chain rule. She had all of us pretend that we were back in elementary school and she modelled the chain rule using shoeboxes and peeling plastic fruit as an analogy. So creative! She simplified it in a way that made it more memorable and it is a method that will probably stick with students for life! She equated opening the shoebox to using the power rule (taking the derivative of the outer function), and then taking the fruit out of the box would always result in a multiplication. Then, she equated peeling the fruit to taking the derivative of that fruit (the inner function).
Rachel came up with such a unique and simplistic way of teaching the chain rule. She had all of us pretend that we were back in elementary school and she modelled the chain rule using shoeboxes and peeling plastic fruit as an analogy. So creative! She simplified it in a way that made it more memorable and it is a method that will probably stick with students for life! She equated opening the shoebox to using the power rule (taking the derivative of the outer function), and then taking the fruit out of the box would always result in a multiplication. Then, she equated peeling the fruit to taking the derivative of that fruit (the inner function).
Sometimes, thinking of analogies such as these will simplify the "complex" or "abstract" concepts and help students better understand it. Rachel did such a great job of teaching the chain rule in a different way!
Challenging Situations
We also discussed different scenarios and dealing with challenging situations in class. Especially in high school, absenteeism and skipping can become a real issue. In my first teaching block, the students in the grade 12 college class would always skip. We had a class of 27 and would be lucky if 10 of them showed up everyday. Most students would come in very late, missing more than half of the period. And at that point, would you mark them as late or as absent?! Some schools have policies on this but these are the issues that I will have to one day face in the near future!
 |
| A.D.D. = Attendance Deficit Disorder |
There are also times when students will intentionally skip on a test day because they are feeling unprepared. What should we do in those situations?! I think that I would go out of my way to create a different test - probably one that's even slightly harder, and have them write it on their lunch the next day that they come back. Otherwise, it's not fair for students who took the time to be prepared and who may just want to get the test done and over with. And if I didn't alter the test and gave them the same one, the students who skipped would have a leg up and be at an advantage because they would've had more time to study and maybe even asked their classmates what was on the test.
These are just some of the many struggles that teachers face all of the time, but you just need to take it in strides and figure out what solutions work for you and your classes.
Now, of course this week's joke had to be calculus related...
Why is the parent function upset with its child?
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Because it was stretched to its limit!
Cheers,
- The Function(al) Teacher
Comments
Post a Comment