rote-problem

Many of my memories of grade school mathematics revolve around these full page, timed, number fact tests. We had to be able to add two numbers fifty times within a minute. Then do the same with subtraction. And multiplication. And division.

Even the NCTM Standards admit that there is a place in the curriculum for rote problems. The key is to finding what place you want them to play in your classroom.

In a collaborative classroom, rote problems can serve several purposes. The nature of such problems is that they aren’t difficult enough to foster much true collaborative interactions, however, at the beginning of class, this may be exactly what you want. My class is usually loud and talkative before class starts, and having an easier first problem gets them to settle down and start thinking about mathematics. Also, such problems can give students confidence, making them more willing to persevere when they get to later, harder problems. Finally, you can use rote problems as a wake-up call for students who aren’t working very hard. If you tell them that these problems are supposed to be straightforward and easy, and they still struggle, they’ll know that they need to study harder.

– Dave Kung 1998-08-09

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Sometimes I wanted the students to be able to eyeball a bunch of problems, easy to hard, (say a bunch of series) and to be able to know the right approach quickly. So some worksheets had a bunch of problems like this, and I’d have each group write down the answers to every problem (e.g. diverge, or converge) on the board. Then I’d just compare answers and any problem that two groups disagreed on, the whole class would have to do explicitly.

– Eric Hsu 1999-01-20