Tuesday, January 15, 2008

pythagorean dictionary

Combustible ingredients:
  • Second semester
  • 10 seniors, all male
  • Honors level
  • Number lovers, currently taking AP Stat
  • Hostile antipathy toward Language Arts, specifically writing

Cooking instructions:

  • Pre-heat classroom to analytical levels
  • Grease students with a charming personality to create student malleability
  • In large group, develop a student-generated list of Language Arts terminology
  • Select and rank the top 16 terms, appropriately numbered, and move over to spreadsheet
  • In large group, develop a student-generated list of Mathematical terminology
  • Select and rank the top 16 terms, appropriately numbered, and move over to spreadsheet
  • Assign each student a bracket
  • Compose a scouting report (read: report) for each opponent, predicting the winner
  • Share scouting reports and then switch bracket assignments
  • Compose a post-game analysis report, identifying the winner, replete with reasons for success and opponent’s causes for defeat
  • Remove from analytical heat and celebrate the victory of Words! Long live Words!

Sample (click to see full bracket):



4 comments:

Anne Van Meter said...

Will you let us place virtual blog bets on the winners? I'm rooting for tesselations, but I haven't fully tracked each bracket...

Jackie Ballarini said...

Great idea! My bet is that Quadratic Equation will beat out Onomatopoeia to go into the finals. I can't wait to hear how this turns out.

How fun!

ken said...

Scouting reports indicate that the Quadratic Equation is, from top to bottom, a bit unbalanced and could suffer as the tournament continues.

However, Onomatopoeia is often more interested in how they sound rather than how they perform. If this is true, ker plunk won't just be a clever sound!

Jackie Ballarini said...

Don't "discriminant" against the Quadratic Equation, it is never unbalanced. Complex, yes. Unbalanced, no.