The synonyms task I tried earlier this week was not as successful as I'd hoped. I had not anticipated two things: the learners misunderstanding the task and the learners not looking up the meanings of words they were unfamiliar with.
I still feel the vocabulary task would have been a valuable task for the learners to engage. Learners would be exposed to both the connections between everyday and mathematical vocabulary, and the nuances between synonyms such as trim and cut.
Ultimately, a positive is that the learners gained a stronger understanding of the meaning of the words addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. However these synonyms will most likely need to be revisited someday.
Greg it is great to see you reflect and make the connections with previous learning. Honesty is the key to improving and seeing that not everything we do as educators can be a success. You clearly know your students and have a clear direction of where you want to head with this. Sometimes learners are not ready to take what we see as the logical next step. Like you have said not a waste of time at all, and one day when that switch does flick they will hopefully draw on this previous experience.
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