LSU EDCI 7055 Progress Blog

One way I like to start a class or tutorial is with a puzzle.  I have found that all students, especially ones who struggle in math class, love puzzles.  The pressure is low, the fun is high...what could be better?!?  Some of my favorites are puzzles by Naoki Inaba , many of which can be found for free on the internet.  My students also love brain teasers such as Math Perplexors  or soduku puzzles.  These puzzles and patterns, especially solving the "tricky" ones, help activate what Zadina calls 'The Reward Pathway', and is just another way for us to help our students do the hard work of learning!  Once we have solved our puzzle, the students are usually ready to go on with a more traditional math discussion.  I like to call this part "turning our brains on!".  Zadina says that "If the person is attending to a stimulus, the firing will be stronger than if the person is simply aware of the stimulus." (p113)  A big part of o...

I'd like you to think of a time when you were mad.  Like, everything-is-red and you feel like you are going to explode M-A-D.  Really pull it up and FEEL it. Now let's learn how to do calculus. Exactly. Our students who come to us with emotional baggage in the form of anxiety, trauma, and/or high stress may find it nearly impossible to learn new information, or even to recall information they have previously learned.  Zadina says that "emotion and learning cannot be separated". One young man I worked with came to the 5th grade with significant emotional trauma.  It took a good 6 months of keeping a safe, positive learning environment for him to truly engage and put forth significant effort, but WOW WHEN HE DID!  He sat by my side for an entire school day while his peers were enjoying a 'free day,' to pull his grades up.  He worked and worked and worked until he had an A in mathematics, and he was SO PROUD of himself.  I will ...