After writing yesterday’s post about my difficulties communicating AND and OR to my students and considering a computer science angle, I decided to just go for it and explain AND and OR that way.
So I drew a box (I love me some box analogies) and labeled it AND. Then I drew two openings on the left and one opening on the right. I wrote T in front of both openings with arrows going into the box and then an arrow coming out of the other side and wrote a last T. Then I gave an example of some AND statement like “My name is Mr. Belcher and I teach math.”
I then repeated with all of the possibilities for True and False and then did it all over again with an OR box.
I was really proud of one student who raised her hand and said, “So, if there is at least one False, then AND will be False. And if there’s at least one True, then OR will be True.” I had not said that explicitly out loud so I was blown away when she said that. She gave that summary very quickly after I had introduced the box analogy and I heaped praise on her.
EDIT: I forgot that in second block another student said “So for the AND box it’s T-way or the highway” which was not only correct but cracked me up.
The students seemed to understand this what goes in and out of the box analogy very well and were able to complete the pattern without me giving it to them, which I was also pleased about.
And it really paid off. When we transitioned to compound inequalities, they did much better with “False AND True is False” or “True or False is True” than they did with union and intersection understandings. I will keep pushing union and intersection as well, but I am very happy about how well the box/CS function analogy went over.
I forgot to finish writing this yesterday so I am writing it this morning before work instead and this is all I have time to write.
Thanks for reading.
The Barefoot Teacher 