Dylan Kane Blog

I really like Dylan Kane's way of giving students problems that are not always review problems or practice problems of the material they learned in class.  He gives students worksheets that do not always involve material they had just learned.  He gave his students POPS assignments.  They are assignments based around Pattern, Order of Operations, and Problem Solving.  He used to try to give them for homework, but found that it just wasn't really working out the way he wanted them to so he stopped.  The other day he kind of ran out of things to do so gave his students one the POPS assignments.  He found that the students who were struggling the previous day with the difficult material enjoyed doing something that was a break from the difficult content and were happy to have something they could complete fairly easily.  He also found the students who normally rush through problems had to stop and think about the patterns.  The students had to discuss the different problems.  He really like the positive class reaction to the POPS assignment and will try to use one every week.  I think this is a great way to give students a break from difficult content and have them think in a different way.  Students should be made to think differently than they normally do and assignments that complete this objective are wonderful.