An Area Problem

I saw this problem on twitter and I thought it looked interesting so I had a go at it...


Then I tweeted my lovely answer...

But what actually happened...

This was not my first attempt. I thought about it first, decided there was too much information to do it in my head. Jotted a diagram down, labelled it badly, made some substitution errors, realised I had made a mistake as my fractions were not cancelling nicely, spotted a pattern and then started again. I redrew a diagram, relabelled it in a more helpful way, used the pattern I had spotted and cancelled fractions as I went to keep calculations to a minimum.

The first attempt looked like this:


I was wondering: Do we ever let our students see us struggle? Do we model good problem solving behaviours? Do we demonstrate how important it is to make mistakes?

Comments

  1. Cav7 July 2017 at 11:13

    I think it's good to allow students see us struggle. For this reason I try to use questions I've not done before quite often. This is more effective at a level than ks3/4 As I tend not to struggle on that content. A part of my master dissertation is focused on struggling.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. beckykwarren7 July 2017 at 15:58

      I had thrown away my first attempt, and only kept my final solution. Only after pondering the value of celebrating mistakes did I retrieve it and photograph it for posterity. I have decided to try and take more notice when I make mistakes or get things wrong..

      Delete

Post a Comment