Clip 16/17: Rate of Change: Post-Lesson Debrief Part B

Overview

Antoinette Villarin and Cecilio Dimas continue their debriefing conversation, focusing on the graph cards that students matched and thinking forward to the next day’s lesson, when the students would be asked to identify corresponding prisms.

Cecilio observes that in a previous lesson, Antoinette had had her students use a color-coding strategy to match representations. He suggests that using that strategy on the following day might help students identify relationships between graph and prism representations of constant rate.

Teacher Commentary

I really appreciate Cecilio’s help in looking at how my students work in pairs. I feel like now they’re able to get started talking right away. Whereas before it'd be like, "Turn and pair share. You're going to tell your partner this."

By having more structure, they get started immediately. There's not a pause or a hesitancy. I also think there's a lot more listening because now they have to write something down when given a product to complete.

Often times now I’ll still have them do a “turn and talk” with that structure, with the purpose of sharing what they're thinking and then their product will be to write what their partner said on your whiteboard.

One of my colleagues used this approach as well and she said the same thing: she felt like they had more intent of doing things. Isn't that amazing? Adding just a few words to what you normally say as a teacher can really change what happens in your classroom.