Sunday 5 April 2015

WODB? Incomplete Sets

I am extremely happy at how well received the Which One Doesn't Belong? website has been. I announced it here and wrote about how I planned to use it in my calculus classes here (I will blog about how it went eventually). Others have also contributed in fantastic ways. You can keep up with submissions to the site and blog posts related to WODB? by following @wodbmath on Twitter. Last week Chris Hunter and I presented at Global Math Department's weekly meeting. I learned a lot from Chris and through that process comes a new page on the site: Incomplete Sets.



The idea is that students would have to logically determine what is present or absent in each of the objects shown, and find a way of completing the set. This can act as a stepping stone between students finding which one doesn't belong and creating their own set. Chris showed a great way of organizing characteristics that would look something like this for the above set:



Since seeing Chris do it this way, I have used this type of table to sort through submissions to the site. I love how logical it is and how it makes it obvious whether you have a solid set - one where each group of 3 objects have something in common that the 4th does not.

Here are two more that I made:




I should specify that when I made these I had characteristics for all four objects, but only showed three. I love that there could be multiple correct answers and that students need to be able to justify their reasoning.

I hope you will join me in creating new complete and incomplete sets! Please use the submission form here and let us all know how you are using these with your students. I have an ever-growing list of other improvements/additions to the website. Please let me know what you would like to see by leaving a comment. Thanks for all the support!

5 comments:

  1. Mary - I love how this combines the best of an "odd one out" situation with the extension of having students generalize and come up with their own examples. I can't wait to make some up and try this with my geometry students. Thank you!

    - Elizabeth (@cheesemonkeysf)

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  2. Whee! This is FAB! It really brings MP3 into play!

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  3. What do you use to create your WODB pictures? I love how professional they are!

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    1. Hi Brandy. I use SMART Notebook to make my WODBs. I posted links to the templates at the bottom of this post: http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2015/03/announcing-which-one-doesnt-belong.html

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