Clip 2/11: Coordinate Geometry Lesson Part 2

Oftentimes, when the prompt is really long, (and with this “Whitebeard Treasure lesson,” it was a long prompt) I’ll do a three read. This class is really motivated with questions that come up on their own. So with three reads, we've done it at least three times already this year. This would be the third time.  

But the first time we did it, they were really excited because they were having to answer their own questions. When I initially had done the three read with them, they had tons of questions. They probably had 10 of them. And I said, “Okay, pick one that you want, and start to explore it.” And I feel like, for this class, they're really motivated by answering their own questions. They have a lot of, “I wonders” and “I notices,” so, when I don't give them the prompt, I think it was exciting for them.  

The second time, we did the same thing. I had them share with me all their math questions, which they were excited about, but then I homed in on one, and I said, “Okay, I want everyone to solve this one particular problem, and then when you're done, you can start to look at some of the other ones.” And they did get to that, which I felt better about. 

I was worried because I knew this prompt didn't have enough information, and I was waiting for them to say that. But they were actually writing questions like, “What are the dimensions of the fencing? What is the area between the two fences?” It seemed like area was a big thing that popped up. And I think that's just because it's something that we've been doing with triangles. They were also including a lot of assumptions, like assuming the dimensions of the shape.  

So, I love that they were adding parameters to that, because we had been talking in the past few days about questions that maybe aren't given to you in the prompt, but that you have to assume. So, I loved when one student said, “Well, assuming that they were 12 by 12 feet, what was the difference in the area?” I liked that they were starting to bring in some things that they knew were missing, and were leading to further questions. They were connecting to things that they've already seen before, like area. Some of them had questions like, “What would be the angle?” because we've been looking at trigonometry, and looking at the angle. So, I love that they're starting to, like, pull these skills that they've been learning over the past couple of years and use them to see how they might approach the problem.