I'm a big fan of creative literacy, generally with a maths focus. What I'm worried about is whether it may do more harm than good.
Some examples; from recent lessons, to things from a while ago...
Shape names: I asked a class if they knew the name of a 12 sided polygon. After a sea of blank faces presented itself, I prompted "it begins with D". Dozenagon was the answer offered. So, for the rest of the lesson we used Dozenagon alongside the proper name.
Same lesson, outterior angles. Opposite of interior, in case you were wondering!
I've also used squillimeters and squentimetres for sq mm and sq cm. This helps avoid the centimetres squared problem. Many students don't appreciate the difference until I tell the (both true) stories of the tech teacher who ordered 10 metres squared of turf for his 10 sq metre garden, and the one (from the telly I'm told) who ordered 5 metres cubed of concrete to be poured on to the floor that required 5 cubic metres. They certainly know the difference.
I've also verbised words. Y12/13 in particular use the verbs To Pythagorise and To Trigonometrise to describe what to do to a forces or vector triangle. Bracketising is something I use as a synonym for factorising.
The question is does it matter? I am always careful to use the real word too, but I feel it is part of building up a good relationship for learning with pupils, and a few years ago some of a class startd keeping a list of made up words in the back of their books. I tried to get them to create a wiki for it, but the VLE didn't make it easy enough, which is a shame as it would be great to have a full record of words over the year.
All thoughts always gratefully received!
Some examples; from recent lessons, to things from a while ago...
Shape names: I asked a class if they knew the name of a 12 sided polygon. After a sea of blank faces presented itself, I prompted "it begins with D". Dozenagon was the answer offered. So, for the rest of the lesson we used Dozenagon alongside the proper name.
Same lesson, outterior angles. Opposite of interior, in case you were wondering!
I've also used squillimeters and squentimetres for sq mm and sq cm. This helps avoid the centimetres squared problem. Many students don't appreciate the difference until I tell the (both true) stories of the tech teacher who ordered 10 metres squared of turf for his 10 sq metre garden, and the one (from the telly I'm told) who ordered 5 metres cubed of concrete to be poured on to the floor that required 5 cubic metres. They certainly know the difference.
I've also verbised words. Y12/13 in particular use the verbs To Pythagorise and To Trigonometrise to describe what to do to a forces or vector triangle. Bracketising is something I use as a synonym for factorising.
The question is does it matter? I am always careful to use the real word too, but I feel it is part of building up a good relationship for learning with pupils, and a few years ago some of a class startd keeping a list of made up words in the back of their books. I tried to get them to create a wiki for it, but the VLE didn't make it easy enough, which is a shame as it would be great to have a full record of words over the year.
All thoughts always gratefully received!
