Random Guy

We have brought Random guy back into the classroom. The boys are now teaching him about geometry. The boys are having so much fun with Random Guy. Over the year, the boys have found this exercise is a great way to check their work. I would love to share some of their Random Guy writings with you. As they write to Random Guy they are told to write their thoughts and not worry about all the grammar. I feel that if they are not as concerned about their grammar, their explanations will be more complete.

I have provided some examples below. In some of the examples the boys left out why they had to subtract. We talked about why that was important to put into to the explanation. I am very proud of the boys for what they came up with. This was given to them with only one measurement and they had to find out the other measurements and the formulas. Not all of the following examples are perfect scores. I wanted to show different examples of the progress the boys are making. I have discovered during this process that the boys are better able to see their errors and I am better able to assess their needs so that they can fully understand what they are doing.

In some of the following examples the boys and I talked about how some of the details were left out. For Example, "Why subtract the area of the circle from the area of the square?" or "How did you get 8 units as the length of one side of the square?" I feel the boys are doing a great job. The boys that wrote this knew the answers to the questions I asked, he just forgot to put it into the explanation. This is another great learning tool. The boys are able to use peer editing and teaching each other at the same time.

Here is the question that the following boys wrote about.