Monday, March 8, 2010
Formulas
Currently we are working on area, perimeter and circumference in order to perpare for the harder stuff like surface area and volume. I have taught the students to depend on the formula sheet. Pretty much everything they need is on there. By focusing on the easier formulas they should already know makes it much easier to introduce the harder ones. If they understand that all of the parts they need are labeled already for them. Now that they understand that they have realized that all they are doing is substituting. Because we have spent some quality time working on the easier formulas I asked my students the other day to solve for the volume of a rectangular prism, cylinder and a cone without going over it and they got it!
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I always encourage them to use the forumula sheet. I also stress that although it is good to memorize them, they don't need to and shouldn't rely on their memory for this at test time. However, some still insist on trying without the formula sheet.
ReplyDeleteWell my students do not have a lot of formulas to know for sixth grade. By the time SOL comes around they know all their forumals from memory. One strategy I use to help them is that each time they are working on a problem, they have to first write down their formula. They use this to plug in their numbers according to the formula. I do not take any work from my students without justification. They have to show step by step how they arrived at the answer. This has really helped my students.
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