Do You Teach Students to Use a Calculator?

What have I learned from teaching middle school math for more than 30 years?  Teach kids to use calculators - don't make them figure it out for themselves.  Learning to use a calculator on their own can lead to so many mistakes.  You can't just hand a kid a scientific or graphing calculator and expect them to know how it works. 

For example, suppose you want your students to "Find x squared when x is negative 32."   Nearly all of your students will enter this into their calculators as -32 squared, and will get an incorrect answer of -1024.  They must be taught to put a negative base in parenthesis when entering it into a calculator in order to get the correct answer, (-32) squared = 1024.

Don't assume your students know how to use calculators.  Instead, build calculator mini-lessons into your curriculum.

Want your students to be more engaged?  They love learning how to use new functions on their calculators.  And guess what?  As you teach them the correct way to use a calculator, suddenly you are elevated to "genius" status in their minds!

Of course the daily tips, tricks, and mini-lessons form the basis of your instruction.  However, if you'd like to try a more formal graphing calculator lesson, you might check this one out.

Explorations with Graphing Calculators