That Successful Feeling!

Yesterday we did another problem at the VWBs.

It had been a while. 

We had to review expectations,

And talk to why some were harder to follow at this time of year!

(End of the year attitudes are a tough hurdle to get over!)

Since we had been learning about volume before the state assessments,

The task was to find the remaining volume in a cylinder after a cone with the same diameter and height was placed in the cylinder.

I only gave them the slant length and diameter.

Only about 1-2 groups were able to work through the problem.

And this was even AFTER we would pause for some rough draft thinking aloud as a whole class!

I asked a few of the students that were successful on their own solving the problem,

How they felt after completion of the task.

Their responses are below.

The students responding to their success only included one high achieving student.  

The other two have struggled in math.

"Knowing that I can make mistakes while solving problems takes most of the pressure off so you aren't thinking that you have to get it right and if you mess up you can't change it."

"When completing a problem in math, it's exciting and makes you feel like something you did is good.  It makes you feel relieved and like you just won 100,000 bucks!"

"I feel great and it's exciting.  It's fun when you understand what's going on in the problem."