On Wednesday, they learned how to complete the square, a long-ish process that generally makes the kids’ eyes roll back in their heads. In a few days, we’ll use that to derive the quadratic formula. But first, we need to discuss taking the square root of a negative number. (Quelle horreur!) For this, they’ll need to learn complex numbers.
So that’s what we did on Friday.
In the course of the lesson, I grabbed a green highlighter and highlighted the real part of a complex number in an example problem. Then I highlighted the imaginary part in yellow. As I did this, I heard talking at the desks behind me.
Now, you must know that during this period, at this pod of five students, there is almost always some talking. They’re rascals, and nothing I have done has solved that problem. Still, they’re good-natured rascals, we get along well, and there’s something about the five of them that seems to be engaged, even if there’s consistently a lot of talking among them.
I glanced over my shoulder, preparing to stare them down. This technique works remarkably well — turn, stop teaching, and stare patiently until they realize that everyone is watching them chat. But when I looked over, I saw that the conversation was about who was going to get which color highlighter. Matt held a blue one up in the air, taunting Dannielle until she settled on orange.
It’s not every day that students wrestle over who gets dibs on the highlighters for the notes. So I turned back around and continued the lesson.