Recently we complete the Parallel Lines AB from Desmos.
As I was reading through the reflection slide and responses, I noticed several students had not actually answered the question. Hmmmm.
Did they understand what it was asking?
I quickly began taking snapshots of their responses, the sorting them and presented them in groups by similarity. My question to them – “What question do these answer?” And this is where we began class the following day.
We discussed using pronouns and whether this was the best choice of words or not. Then there was this set of responses.
This led to how we can review our responses to make sure we are answering the question being asked.
I remember when I taught geometry, students would often solve the problem, but they never actually used that solution to address the actual question being asked. Calling their attention to this was often eye-opening and helped to remediate the issue quickly.
Attention to precision for me can be several things. Accurate work, labeling our quantities, but also communicating our reasoning, answering a question thoroughly, supporting our responses with evidence. Snapshots is a wonderful tool to bring things like this to light.
What are some ways you address attention to precision in your classroom?
the radical rational... 