Sunday, November 04, 2007

Math Professional Development With Abbott and Costello: Two Tens For A Five


When I stated building a library of Abbott and Costello film clips for Halloween I hit upon many routines I was unfamiliar with , like this for example. The thought occurred to me, Wow, wouldn't these be cool to use as "seeds" for math problem discussions? Now, I haven't quite though t it through completely, but evidently someone else did, the folks at mathventures Their credo:"MathVentures, a division of Ten Ninety, which operates this math idea log, is dedicated to promoting math knowledge. We are passionately dedicated to K-12 math education."
Now how this would be used exactly, I don't know? But maybe it would encourage kids to write inventive dialogue involving money and/or numbers that would appear logical but in fact would not, sort of like a three card monte reading writing workshop. Hey am I being redundant here? When I figure out a more coherent strategy I'll let you know or maybe someone could tell me. In any case, here's part of the transcript from clown-ministry.com. Enjoy
Bud Abbott: Have you got two tens for a five?

Lou Costello: Yeah.

Bud Abbott: There we are. There’s your ten.

Lou Costello: (irritated) Come on, come on!

Bud Abbott: What’s the matter with you? Something wrong?

Lou Costello: Yeah, fifteen dollars went south!

Bud Abbott: What do you mean?

Lou Costello: You give a lot of fast talk! You say, "give me two tens for a five" and I give it to you.

Bud Abbott: Oh, you did? Wise guy! Okay, here’s your five, give me back my two tens.

Lou Costello: That’s better.

Bud Abbott: Now get out of here.

1 comment:

Uri said...

Just show this video to a first or second grader and watch. If he/she gets the jokes, not the slapstick but the money exchange, ask him/her to explain it. Otherwise, ask the child to watch carefully and to tell what is going on -- addition? subtraction? Is anything wrong?

You will be surprise -- they get it and often can explain it, not in math ling but in their own word.

And if they don't, it's your opportunity to stage this scene and use it to teach them some basic mathematical relationships and operations.

One of the folks at MathVentures