thinking
-
Trick for subtracting integers
I have algebra students, in high school and college, who struggle with evaluating expressions like 2 – 5. This is a ubiquitous problem. I have tried several strategies and the one that is easily the most effective is shown below. When a student is stuck on 2 – 5 the following routine plays out like…
-
Shaping Behavior
Shaping is a term in special ed which basically means to train a student to incrementally follow through on a sequence of substeps to accomplish a task. B.F. Skinner coined a different name for this which he called operant conditioning. The top photo below shows “Skinner’s box.” The pigeon was placed in the box and…