Clip 10/18: Quadratic Function Problem 2 - Part C

Watching how conversations moved forward in pairs, I see that students did not push each other to give reasons as much as I had hoped. This instead seemed to come out most as teams were questioned about their matching decisions by an adult. I periodically use the strategy of verbally “quizzing” teams or pairs after they have a chance to make sense of a problem in order to probe their thinking and better understand their reasoning. However, I recognize that while I spend time with a team others may not be getting their questions answered. In this lesson I had the luxury of two adults in the classroom to help question teams about their thinking. Students engaged with the matching activity in interesting ways. Some students were aware of which kinds of problems they waited until the end to match because they wanted to narrow the number of possible choices. As they found two problems that they thought would have the same first step, they also were able to revise some of their own thinking without intervention from a teacher.