Clip 5/5: Post Lesson - Part 2 Graphs Equation Tables

Overview

The observing colleagues share their noticings about the changes in students' language, moving from "kid language" to more academic language. One colleague shares that the student group he observed was using a high degree of academic language, and as they developed their work they maintained that high level. The faculty consider how to refocus students who appear to understand the language but are using it in a slightly wrong way.

Teacher Commentary

JESSE RAGENT: For me the key ideas that are expressed here are: the value of forcing kids to communicate and justify their statements with mathematical reasons; that this task can be somewhat trivialized by simply "point matching"; and when group discussions are done well, the force of an argument lies in the mathematics used rather than in the personality or status of the speaker.

For my own practice, this reminds me of how difficult it is to monitor and prompt many groups within a classroom. While moving around I only get a current snapshot of how the group is doing. I wonder if there is some type of recording sheet that the group could fill out as they go so that at a glance I could get a sense of how they've proceeded, but I fear that this might undermine the freedom and fluidity that the cards (and their inherent mobility) provide.