inductive/deductive

To this point I’ve been mostly having the students learn deductively. In doing so, I feel as though I’ve been doing too much of the work and not allowing the students think more and come up with things on their own.

I introduced inductive learning to transitions to algebra classes. The lesson was for them to differentiate between solving, evaluating and simplifying. I put a chart up on the board and I gave them examples of each. Then I asked them to determine what made one different from the others and list the distinguishing characteristics of the three expressions. From their determinations we came up with a definition for all three.

They came up with a list and we discussed them in class. I like doing the inductive method because it allowed students to do more of the work. I had been doing more deductive lessons than I should because in math there are many opportunities for students to induce the premise from examples given. It went over pretty well even though it would have been much better if my class was a little better disciplined.