For those of you non-teachers, WCYDWT (What Can You Do With This?) is an innovative way of formulating lessons that I am going to try to incorporate into my classes this year. It involves taking a piece of interesting, rich media (ie. video or picture), and asking the kids a question that naturally arises as they observe this. Then, the kids brainstorm the pieces of data that they will need to collect before you reveal the available info to them piecewise. The calculation comes in the final part of the problem, not immediately, thereby maximizing the amount of meta-processing they need to do. You should anticipate me updating regularly throughout the year, to reflect my efforts in this area.
(Pictures taken from What Stormtroopers Do on Their Day Off.)
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By the way, this is a cute application for the sum of a Geometric sequence, that I found over at the NCTM site.
Each spring, a trout pond is restocked with fish. That is, the population decreases each year due to natural causes, but at the end of each year, more fish are added. Here’s what you need to know.
- There are currently 3000 trout in the pond.
- Due to fishing, natural death, and other causes, the population decreases by 20% each year, regardless of restocking.
- At the end of each year, 1000 trout are added to the pond.
Find a mathematical model for the trout population over time.
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