One of the girls in my class has been telling me how much she hates math. She thinks it's hard and thinks it's boring. I've tried a few different approaches to motivating her and trying to change her thinking - telling her how good she is at math (she is), trying to relate math to something she loves, etc. - but to no avail.
Over the past few days, her and a few other students have been bugging me about when my birthday is since we've had our first few class birthdays recently. I decided that, instead of continuing my ruse of saying I didn't have a birthday or saying that I'm 756 years old, I would allow them to figure out my birthday using math concepts we had just learned in our 1st unit. Therefore, my morning message today read:
Good morning 5th Grade!
Today is Friday, August 19th and today we will be going to Mr. Murphy for Art during Encore. After you have unpacked quietly, you may either write in your writing journal about something you are looking forward tothis weekend or try to figure out what Mr. Lin's birthday is.
Mr. Lin is born in September on a day that is a 2-digit number. This number is a multiple of 2 and is is a factor of 20 - but it is NOT 20.
He was born between 1966 and 1982, and the YEAR he was born is divisible by 3, but not by 2, 4, 5, 6, or 9.
What date and year is Mr. Lin born? You may use the divisibility rules in your math binders to help.
Have a fantastic Friday,
Love,
Mr. Lin
A little girl that is still convinced that she hates math and isn't good at it figured out my birthday in seconds, and is puzzling through figuring out my birth year. Hopefully I can keep tricking her into doing math problems voluntarily!
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