Clip 7/18: Lesson Part 1D
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After playing the video of the Olympic swim relay for the students, Lisa Hennefarth asks, “What happened in the race?” Students respond that “the USA came back at the very end.” Students note that France was leading for most of the relay, and then the USA came back at the end. Lisa shares that she swam competitively, and this was thrilling for her. She distributes a sheet with a problem sharing a different swim meet, asking them to do a three-read: first reading it quietly to themselves and considering “What is this about? What are you being asked to do?” In the second read, she asks students to highlight and underline important information. She asks a student to read the problem aloud. Lisa asks students to have a conversation with the table group about what the task is about, how many people they’re talking about, and what they’re being asked to do. She then asks various students to restate the details of the problem and its focus. She ensures that students understand what a “radio commentator” does. Students give their perspectives on what the problem is asking them to do, including “make it as interesting as possible.”
Teacher Commentary
Teacher Commentary
Lisa Hennefarth
We had spent a lot of time preemptively talking about the “story behind the graph” -- for example, looking at two things, a toy rocket and a drone. What did that look like in the graph? They talked about the drone hovering. So I felt that it was a way to build language, writing a commentary. Some kids students have told me “This feels like an English class.” That’s good! Because think about it: if you can tease out a topic sentence, if you can tell a story, you could tell a story about a book you've read, or you can tell the story of your experiment in science. That’s what I was looking to capitalize on in this task.