Down the Road to Success with One Shoe off and One Shoe On

Abstract

Plop! A shoe lands in the center of the circle in which the students are seated. The one shoe on, one shoe off instructor says, 'there's one of my shoes, so let's have a shoe from about nine of you. After some giggles, tee hees and hesitation, in come the shoes. Boots, sandals, sneakers and thongs. your first task is to ivide all of these shoes into two piles. The piles don't have to have equal numbers of shoes, but all of you must agree on some obvious characteristic that distinguishes the shoes in one pile from the those in the other pile. You all agree that the shoes in one pile have rubber soles and those in the second pile have soles made of materials other than rubber. Let's keep a record of our agreements on the board. Hobbling to the board the instructor draws two horizontal lines, one some distance above the other. The lines are then labeled in accord with the decisions of the group (fig. 1). So far, so good. Now, ignore the pile of non-rubber soled shoes for a moment. Just push them aside. Your immediate task is to divide the pile of rubber-soled shoes into two distinct piles. Very good. You all agree that some are open-toed, while the rest have closed toes. Let's add some lines to our Bobbing back to the board, the instructor modifies the sketch and adds the new labels (fig. 2). to the shoes. Divide the open-toed group into two distinct piles. We'll ignore the closed-toed shoes for the moment. Good, you're catching on fast. Some have loops for the toes while one shoe lacks two loops. Back to the sketch to add the new data. Let's add a pair of lines to the open-toed branch of our diagram so now it looks like this: Since there is only one shoe without toe loops, let's name the owner, 'Mary.' (fig. 3) What criteria will you use to divide the shoes with toe loops into separate piles? Red loops and blue loops? Since the red-looped shoes are Joe's and the blue-looped shoes belong to Sue, let's add this information to our Excellent thus far. Now let's divide the pile of closed-toe shoes into two groups. Leather uppers and canvas uppers? Good. Add this criteria to our sketch. Then separate the shoes with the canvas uppers. White canvas belong to Slim and black canvas belong to Archie. Add this data to our sketch, too. that we've finished with the pile of shoes with rubber soles, let's push them aside and work with the shoes without rubber soles. Remember, first we divide this pile into two groups. Boots and shoes other than boots? Fine! Trekking to the board once again, the instructor or a student chosen to be the class scribe adds to the non-rubber sole line to begin the new series of dichotomous rubber soles