Engaging+Permutations+Text

This is a Guide to Aid Students in Engaging Difficult Text about Permutations



Introduction to Probability - [|Full Text Found Here]
by Charles M. Grinstead - Swarthmore College and J. Laurie Snell - Dartmouth College

**Suggested Strategies for Engaging This Text**

 * **Anticipation Guide** [|Link to explanation]
 * The Anticipation Guide will be used to inspire motivation and self-efficacy in reading this difficult text by allowing students to make predictions based on prior knowledge and arouse curiosity by bringing up potential topics of the text. I would use it as a fairly short attention grabber.
 * Here are a few examples for an Anticipation Guide for this Text that would be answered with "Very Likely," "Somewhat Likely," or Not Very Likely"
 * That you will improve your counting skills by reading this text.
 * That two people in the class have the same birthday.
 * That there are more than 50 different ways a team could collect wins and loses in a 7 game World Series.
 * That you can prove that two people in your city have the exact same 3 Initials without knowing anyone's names or initials.
 * **ReQuest** [|Link to explanation]
 * The purpose of the ReQuest strategy here is to continue to develop questions about how permutations are used.
 * For this text I would have the students group into fours. The whole class will read the first page and a half and then close their books.
 * Each group will discuss and come up with two questions for the teacher about the reading.
 * Then, the roles are reversed and the teacher asks the students a question like: This section of the reading did not explicitly speak about permutations but, can you give me an educated guess as to what a permutation is or what it does?
 * This would continue with the next 3 sections of the text so that in the last section the students get to the definition and examples of permutations.
 * **KWL** [|Link to explanation]
 * The purpose of the KWL in this circumstance is to help the students to continue to stay engaged in the text while they are reading on their own.
 * The whole class may share aloud what they now know about permutations to help fill out the first column of the graph.
 * Then the teacher may call on two or three students to give examples of what they would put in the "want to know" column.
 * Then the teacher will assign the rest of the section on permutations and the completion of the chart as homework, with the option of assigning some of the problems at the end of the sections as well.

These Strategies working together form a **[|Sociocultural Theory]** based lesson. It is introducing the complex mental processes of permutations in social activities. The lesson attempts to provide enough scaffolding to keep the students in their Zone of Proximal Development. When the students come back the next day with their KWL charts filled out the teacher will have a good idea where the students are in their understanding of permutations and where to supplement the text with more explanation. It might be a good idea to let the students work on some of the more difficult problems from the text in groups.

[|Wikipedia's Permutations page] [|Video Introduction to Permutations]
 * Other helpful sites**

Strategies found in: Vacca, R. T., Vacca, J. L., & Mraz, M. (2011). Content area reading: Literacy and learning across the curriculum (10th ed.). Boston: Pearson.