This is the online discussion of teachers as we move through the lesson study process. Lesson Study provides an efficient organization for teachers to collaborate as we learn more about our content and how students learn.
I am going to give a bit of a review of how the lesson went this morning. Guitar Hero certainly captured the students’ attention.
General comments about the scores were as we expected except for a couple of students who tried to find numerical patterns.. The students immediately went to work as soon as they had the paper Students solutions included everything we had noted: fractions, finding common numbers, changing all three scores to fractions with common denominators, subtraction, and 2 tried percentages although their answers were not correct. I believe everyone finally got the correct answer .
Some children finished in moments and some took a very long time. Those were writing explanations with complete sentences and each small detail. The lesson lost its flow as we waited on students to finish.
Students got so involved in explaining their strategy or wanting to report a different way that the simple strategy of finding a common unit got a bit lost.
The subtraction strategy was discussed as presented in the lesson. The child who suggested it did not want to admit it wasn’t a good strategy and continued to try to make it work. Second Set of Numbers: He even tried again with the second set of numbers. Of course, it didn’t work. During the second set of numbers, I heard one student say exactly what we wanted, she compared common denominators and then went to numerators. The girls who did common fractions continued with their strategy. Some began randomly adding or subtracting to make one quantity the same. We had to have the discussion about if they played 2 more games you do not know whether they would win or lose so you can’t just add 2 more games, etc. Two students drew the bar model.
Again, students wanted to multiply, add, etc in order to compare all 3 players. They were so involved with working numbers the goal of the lesson was lost. They didn’t do what we wanted which was to look and think before acting. Recording the justifications again took a long time so the lesson flow was broken.
Third Set Most everyone went to common denominators.
I learned so much watching this lesson especially on the importance of focusing on the goal. It's a challenging lesson because there are so many places where students might stumble. I believe we are going to have to make it simpler and more directly focused on our goals.
Thanks for the reflection on the initial lesson, Becky. "Whew" underscores how complicated teaching really is and how much we have yet to learn. :)
I'm anxious to hear whether there were any changes in students' approaches and understanding after the revised lesson. Was the revision used with the same or a different class?
I am going to give a bit of a review of how the lesson went this morning. Guitar Hero certainly captured the students’ attention.
ReplyDeleteGeneral comments about the scores were as we expected except for a couple of students who tried to find numerical patterns..
The students immediately went to work as soon as they had the paper
Students solutions included everything we had noted: fractions, finding common numbers, changing all three scores to fractions with common denominators, subtraction, and 2 tried percentages although their answers were not correct. I believe everyone finally got the correct answer .
Some children finished in moments and some took a very long time. Those were writing explanations with complete sentences and each small detail. The lesson lost its flow as we waited on students to finish.
Students got so involved in explaining their strategy or wanting to report a different way that the simple strategy of finding a common unit got a bit lost.
The subtraction strategy was discussed as presented in the lesson. The child who suggested it did not want to admit it wasn’t a good strategy and continued to try to make it work.
Second Set of Numbers:
He even tried again with the second set of numbers. Of course, it didn’t work.
During the second set of numbers, I heard one student say exactly what we wanted, she compared common denominators and then went to numerators. The girls who did common fractions continued with their strategy. Some began randomly adding or subtracting to make one quantity the same. We had to have the discussion about if they played 2 more games you do not know whether they would win or lose so you can’t just add 2 more games, etc. Two students drew the bar model.
Again, students wanted to multiply, add, etc in order to compare all 3 players. They were so involved with working numbers the goal of the lesson was lost. They didn’t do what we wanted which was to look and think before acting. Recording the justifications again took a long time so the lesson flow was broken.
Third Set
Most everyone went to common denominators.
I learned so much watching this lesson especially on the importance of focusing on the goal. It's a challenging lesson because there are so many places where students might stumble. I believe we are going to have to make it simpler and more directly focused on our goals.
Whew, I'm learning.
Becky
Thanks for the reflection on the initial lesson, Becky. "Whew" underscores how complicated teaching really is and how much we have yet to learn. :)
ReplyDeleteI'm anxious to hear whether there were any changes in students' approaches and understanding after the revised lesson. Was the revision used with the same or a different class?
Alice