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.
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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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