Results of Enacting Curriculum (Day 2)

Word Problems. They are generally the most feared thing in Math (besides factoring and fractions). I used the ideas put forth in our readings and started with something the students were familiar with:

If I have 5 ten dollar bills and 3 five dollar bills, how much money do I have?

The idea being that they take the amount of bills and multiply by the worth of each bill. This gets the general idea of what we will be doing with percentage problems and lots of others. So after this easy problem, I gave them:

I have 7 bills (tens and ones) that equal $34. How many of each bill do I have?

They start to think of all the possibilities and for some of the problems like this they have a hard time figuring out the right combination. So we took the original idea of multiply worth by amount and wrote an equation to help us solve. This seemed a lot easier for them from students past because they started with a basic idea. Writing an equation wasn't so bad because they already understood the concept.

This led into being able to solve "solution" problems that involved percents. In years past I just showed students a method to solve and then had them replicate it. But today, they were able to connect the amount and worth together and told me what to do to solve. Even some of my students that usually say, "I don't get it" were getting it. I was so amazed and pumped at the results. An example of the "solution" problems:

A chemist has some 8% hydrogen peroxide solution and some 5% hydrogen peroxide solution. How many mL of each should be mixed together to make a 300 mL solution which is 6% hydrogen peroxide.

Before these problems mesmerized my students, but today they were actually attempting them and solving them correctly. For you math teachers out there, if you haven't tried starting with something basic that your students already know, you need to give it a shot. For those students that struggle, I think it really built up their confidence to start with something easy then work harder.