Clip 3/13: Graphing Quadratics Lesson - Part 3

In my students' group discussions, I'm pushing for higher order of thinking that can advance the conversation somehow. Part of that has to do with who's the audience for the answer. Is it the teacher? Is it the group if it's a small group conversation, or is it the whole class? I want the audience to get that a student responding is a learner and has both questions and insights regardless of their status. I want the answer to model what mathematical thinking should look and sound like. It should have reasons, it should maybe point the way towards the generalization or trajectory or a strategy to be in the service of some mathematics that's a little bit bigger.







This group is super interesting to me because if I'm remembering right, one of these students' papers were always a struggle. They were full of things that made no sense whatsoever, just the function of her lack of background before. This is the kid who could have reacted to all that random stuff on her paper just by quitting, and she doesn't. The fact that she's taking it upon herself to take what she's understanding and share it with her partner is super interesting to me, and really spoke to the kind of human being that she is, I think. I notice the number of times when she just told him what to write, but was trying to make sure that it was sort of written correctly, which I think is her own way of trying to make sense of mathematics, giving reasons for her thinking.