Comments on: Great Classroom Action

By: Dan Meyer

Dan Meyer — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 05:05:17 +0000

mike:

constructive understanding certainly does not follow the 3 acts thing dan purports here all the time, as i’m sure he’d be the first to say.

Say what now?

By: mike

mike — Tue, 15 Dec 2015 04:23:29 +0000

@joshua

ah but this isn’t meant to be an all encompassing lesson.
that’s not the goal at all here, rather it seems to be:

a) get kids understanding measurement in 2 dimensions with a concept they are all familiar with and which transcends language itself(taste)

b) get kids comfortable and feeling confident and happy about how such measurement works, in their own way.

constructive understanding certainly does not follow the 3 acts thing dan purports here all the time, as i’m sure he’d be the first to say.

as a student of classes in which at least half are learning the classroom language for the first time, points a) and b) are many orders of importance > refinement and language based expression. there are other forms you know, and no matter how talented a student might be mathematically(and i do teach some veritable geniuses), they must first feel comfortable in understanding alternative expressions prior to formulating complex expressions.

By: Scott Farrar

Scott Farrar — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 19:55:50 +0000

Wow I like Julie’s zombie lesson a lot. I wrote up something I did that is similar, but I wish I had started or layed some groundwork in the way Julie did.

http://scottfarrar.com/blog/quickie-lesson-description/ Zombies and Exponential / Logistic Growth (this was a pre-calc class)

By: Joshua

Joshua — Mon, 14 Dec 2015 16:47:14 +0000

Cultural (and math) sensitivity, from the fruit on a plane lesson:
1) The collection of fruit doesn’t fit with a -5 to 5 axis, because all of them are likely to be considered tasty. In fact, it is easy to find classrooms in this part of the world where any form of food will get positive marks (b/c food isn’t always available to the kids or their families). Unfortunately, not everyone can afford to be picky about what they eat.

2) Teaching math in a language the kids don’t understand or speak is really sub-optimal (mathematically). My guess is language difficulty makes this into a traditional lesson experience where the kids try to copy and parrot back what the teacher has done/said.

This will be missing out all the magic of notice&wonder/3-acts:
– kids expressing themselves (mathematically)
– teacher guiding and training for refined expression
– kids asking their own questions (and seeing that asking questions is a key part of math)
– kids trying to answer their own questions
etc

All of that is language based (obviously).

Sorry to be so critical of someone who is clearly a cool teacher and well-intentioned on his trip.