Weekly Constants

Please remember that in order for kids to get full credit for participating each day, they need to come to class prepared. The usual should go without saying (paper, pencils, calculator, etc), but for all my classes this includes a functioning dry erase marker! We spend most of each class period doing problems on the table surfaces with those markers. And I’m not lending out any more of my markers; they’re lost or destroyed almost instantly 🙂

Extra credit opportunities: these are quick oral quizzes of five questions each. Students can attempt them once per day, and need to get all five questions right to get any credit. Answers need to be instant; we’re going for memorization here!

1) The perfect squares quiz. I give the student a number from 13 to 60, and they have to tell me the square of the number. For example, if I give them 38, they answer 1444.

2) The primes quiz. I give the student a number under 400, and they have to tell me if it’s prime or not. If not prime, they have to tell me one of its non-trivial divisors. For example, if I give them 143, they reply, “143 is not prime, because it’s divisible by 11.”