Friday, January 6, 2012

Picking Things Up and Putting Them Down

There is a commercial that I've seen several times for a gym.  One of the muscle bound guys keeps repeating, "I pick things up and put them down."  It's a silly commercial but we find it funny.

This week in math H12 consented to resume her work in Algebra.  Before Christmas we'd called a break because the injustice of working math problems with no "purpose" was killing her.  She just couldn't stop arguing about the usefulness of algebra.  She also was unwilling to consider that while finding the point slope formula might not help her now, there was a reason she needed learn how to do it.

When we resumed math this week, the point slope formula came easily.  She could even see how learning to plot points several weeks ago helped in the new skill.  As we were working through the problems we began comparing building these skills with exercise.  Of course it didn't take too long before H12 remembered the gym commercial.  "So I guess every time I do a problem like this"  H12 continued in her best tough guy voice, "I'm picking things up and putting them down" to get ready for later math."

This entire week we've been "picking things up and putting them down" during math and having fun doing it.

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