This topic “Permutations and Combinations” is one of the topic that most of my students don’t like (me too 😯 *whoops*). But for some students who are really excel in Maths, of course, no problems at all. Lucky me, having them in my class.

When the topic of your mathematics class is not just like calculating and using formula, then, it will more challenge you how to teach them.

In your explanations, it is not just “must be in clear”, but you should also recognize your students’ understanding level. Some of them grab the concept in easily, but some of them hard to translate the meaning of the words. How can you make them differentiate between arrangement and selection, for example, in one problem. For me, I see difficulties to make them understand it.

Beside this topic is hard to explain, a good thing always appears on the other side. When you see your students get excited after finding the answers (similar situation and reaction when they can show trigonometry identities problems), you will satisfy and feel success teaching them.

To make them excited during the test, in one section of my test paper, I attached the answer key (without working process) on each question. Instead of asking them to answer, I want them to explain how to get the answer, in any methods.

They were happy, you know, test but answer key was given? yeaaayy. They tried to find the answers, they used any methods, to match it with the given one. They are allowed to do that, of course. However, at the end, marks will be given based on their explanations, why they chose that way.

After I distributed the test paper back to them, no one complaint about the test score. Although, there were some students provide the answer same with the given one, but the process was wrong, they will not get the marks on that question. They knew and realized, that they “created” the “not logical” working that came up with the same answer 🙂 .

This is interesting, isn’t it?

In one side, you trust your students to find any methods with any working process to get the answer same with the answer key given by you (for me, it is actually exercising their critical thinking) while in the other side they will try as hard as they can to get it.

These two pictures are captured from two students who provided their answers with complete explanations (structural and also wording).