![]() This discovery lab that I’m sharing with you today took the place of that shortcut, and man, what a difference it has made. If I could go back in time I would make sure that shortcut never saw the light of day. I was shocked to see that someone who had been teaching for so long had gotten a hold of my shortcut and was using it. Then, this past week I was in a colleague’s classroom with my coaching duties and I saw her using this shortcut. ![]() Students couldn’t solve these problems a few weeks later, let alone when they saw the distance formula again in high school. It was a momentary fix and they could pass a test. I created a shortcut where they put the two coordinate points on top of each other and subtract to find a and b in the Pythagorean Theorem. I knew my kids would struggle because they have a hard time memorizing and of course they struggle with adding and subtracting integers. When I first had to teach the distance formula, to be honest I wasn’t sure what it was. Shortcuts sometimes seem like a great idea, but sometimes, even when they seem to go right, they go so wrong. ![]() I shared all about how my own short-cut blew up in my face in this blog post. I have a lot of sad stories related to distance formula and me. When students get to the place of struggle, and then you give them just a little support, then they understand and remember the distance formula more than ever before. In this blog post I’m sharing with you a powerful way to teacher the distance formula that really pushes students to struggle productively and ultimately learn the distance formula at a deeper level. Do your students struggle to understand and remember the distance formula? Boy, have I been there. ![]()
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