>...Not a single person in
>the class could explain to me what the problem was actaully asking. Even
>when I asked them if they had ever tried to move a piece of furniture (or a
>ladder or a bed frame) out of a room into a hall could they see this was
>that type of problem, they had difficulty seeing it.
Bret, it very well could be a reading problem. However, it might help a great deal if you were to dissolve the abstractness of the problem by actually bringing in a 12-foot 2" x 4" and take the whole class out to a hallway and get them to measure the angles, measure the clearances, the 2x4 length, the hall width, and so on and THEN try to solve the problem (maybe first with scale models, then graphing the measured values, and finally, algebraically). While all of us on this list (probably abstract learners) have no trouble visualizing the furniture going around the corner problem, our students obviously cannot.
I'm not excusing the laziness of many students who just don't want to think about a problem, but many, many people **ARE** able to learn if we can just present topics in a concrete way---letting them get their "hands on" the problem. I realize it sounds simplistic, but sometimes you'd be amazed at how the lights come on for students when they can just physically *touch* the problem.
John Chamberlain | C - O - R - D
Senior Associate | 601 Lake Air Dr
- - - - - - - - - - - | Waco, TX 76710
800-972-2766, Ext 221 | Fax 254-772-8972
chamber@cord.org | http://www.cord.org
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