This Chalk Was Made for Talking
Creating Opportunities for Equitable Participation in Mathematics This lesson study implemented the “Let the Chalk Do the Talk” structure in a sixth grade classroom at Grand Blanc East Middle School and in two eighth grade classrooms at Owosso Middle School. Our goal with this lesson was for students to participate equitably in their groups and in the classroom discussion. In previous cycles, we examined how the use of multiple representations and scaffolded cognitive demand support student participation. We learned in our most recent cycle how classroom culture and school demographics affect our evaluation of student participation.
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Our goal with this cycle of Lesson Study was to take the lessons we learned from the previous cycles and to apply them to improve student participation, both in their small groups and in the class discussion. Activity Lesson Plan This Chalk Was Made for Talking
Creating Opportunities for Equitable Participation in Mathematics This lesson study implemented the “Let the Chalk Do the Talk” structure in two eighth grade Algebra classrooms at Owosso Middle School. We initially studied student language in written and verbal discussions, but shifted our focus to the impact of written communication on the distribution of student participation. We found that participation was more equitably distributed among students in the post-lesson discussion when compared with baseline lessons. Our goal with this cycle of lesson study is to examine how altering group dynamics by modifying the mode of communication affects student participation. Activity Lesson Plan Revisions for this cycle in purple Context
The structure for our study lesson is “Let the Chalk Do the Talk,” in which students work silently in groups to explore new concepts and make conjectures and generalizations. In their groups, they communicate through writing and pictures, asking questions of each other and the teacher, who is circulating around the room and offering questions or suggestions to groups in order to advance their mathematical thinking. As students conclude their work on the task, they are able to work cooperatively on an additional challenge problem that requires the students to build upon the knowledge that they have just acquired and apply it to a related (yet with key differences) situation. Afterwards, we debrief the task as a class, asking groups to share specific observations that the teacher noticed on their papers with the class, with a particular focus on showing differing strategies in a scaffolded manner. We have selected this structure for our study lesson with the goal of developing our students’ ability to accurately utilize mathematical language, as well as our own skill with asking questions to advance mathematical understanding and generate discussion without lowering cognitive demand. Often, in our dialogue with students, we inadvertently (or sometimes intentionally) give hints that indicate a direction for students to pursue in the task, which effectively lowers cognitive demand by specifying a pathway. High cognitive demand tasks require students to utilize diverse kinds of thought and skill, which in turn produces the most significant and valuable outcomes for student learning. Through this lesson study, we have hopes to gain a deeper understanding of the ways in which we lower cognitive demand and methods of questioning and guiding students that minimize the diminishing effects on cognitive demand. Our goal with this lesson study is to develop students who are able to justify, reason, conjecture, and communicate, and an initial step to this is helping our students to become more comfortable, confident, and competent at writing about mathematics. We also hope to improve our skills as teachers in asking questions to assess student thinking and to advance student knowledge through questioning. In order to accomplish this goal, we are focusing our lesson study around a common structure, “Let the Chalk Do the Talk.” This activity will require students to be pattern detectives, visualizers, conjecturers, experimenters, and describers. With this structure, we hope to help our students gain confidence and competence in reasoning via writing. Task Instructions:
Activity Lesson Plan Post-enactment revisions in blue |
Lesson StudyA project in which I partner with fellow teacher interns to collaboratively develop a high cognitive demand lesson over the course of a year. We implemented our lesson in multiple grade levels at Owosso Middle School and Grand Blanc East High School. Archives
April 2016
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