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Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Students talk math with Algebra Project founder | Mansfield News Journal

Photo: Robert Moses
Submitted/Susan Young 
Photography
Photo: Courtney Day
"Seated in a semi-circle with Algebra Project founder Robert Moses at The Ohio State University at Mansfield on Tuesday, six freshmen from Mansfield Senior High School talked through the relationships between positive and negative integers." notes Courtney Day | Breaking News Reporter , News.

Photo: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Instead of using traditional mathematics vocabulary, the students explained an exercise they had done in class using blocks. Stack four blocks to the right and you have positive four. Stack two to the left and you have negative two.

But what if you have four blocks on the right and two on the left? Your answer is positive two, but you get there not by subtracting a positive number but by adding a negative one. Algebraically, the expression is 4 + (-2) = 2.

Moses waited patiently while the students explained the exercise and then described the outcome using mathematics vocabulary. Occasionally, he injected  questions into their dialogue, but mostly, he just listened.

Only after the students solved the problem did his teaching begin.

"In arithmetic, it's the operation which pulls the direction of your bounce," Moses said. "It tells you which way to bounce and gives you direction — bounce this way if you're adding, and bounce this way if you're subtracting."

This, Moses explained, is a big difference between arithmetic and algebra.
Read more... 

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Robert Parris Moses - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Source: Mansfield News Journal