A lot of the activities I have talked about on this blog, or the ideas I talk about, are generally ones I have put significant time into. The activity I am talking about in this post has been a very successful one for me over the last few days. I would like to say that it was because of the careful and deliberate planning I did on the task prior to the lesson, but that would be a lie. Sometimes as the lesson is unfolding you see an opportunity present itself, and by following it through, sometimes planning the next step on the run, you can have a really good lesson. Planning the next step on the run was not a result of being disorganised, but a result of identifying an emerging need and recognising the need to follow up on it before moving any further.
They then had a conversation with their table groups about what they thought would be the colour of the other 5 blocks. Not surprisingly all the responses were some combination of red and blue blocks, however despite knowing that there were lots of other colours of blocks in the storage tub, they had not considered they could be part of the final five.
Next I wanted to introduce the idea of using probabilities to describe exactly what is in the box so I gave them the information listed below and then gave them the time in groups to have the discussions required to figure it out I have filled the box now with blocks according to the criteria below, can you tell me how many blocks of each colour are in the box? What was exciting about seeing them work on this was that I finally saw the classroom culture that I have been trying to build all year with them. In working together on the problem they were talking about the problem, they were critiquing each other's reasoning, they were asking questions of each other, they were willing to tell the group when the explanation still didn't make sense to them, forcing the person giving the explanation to justify their thinking more strongly. I think one of the most important aspects of their work though was their confidence with their answer. With these sorts of questions when they tell me they have the answer I try to ask a few questions to head their thinking down a line that creates some doubt that they have found the answer. This isn't done to trip them up, but is more designed to see if they have got to a point where they feel the have considered everything and have come to the only answer that works, to gauge their confidence in their own thinking. Normally when I ask students a question about their answer they take this as an indication that their answer is wrong, but this time, no matter what question I asked them about their answer they had confidence with it as they had determined that 12 was the only possible number of blocks as you could not have parts of blocks. The next day the aim was to move towards students being able to determine how to calculate the probability of pulling a block of a certain colour out of the box, to help facilitate this i made up a simulation of the box compostion from the previous day using excel. The excel file and a screen shot is shown below.
Like the day before i got students drawing the blocks from the box and this time we tracked the probabilities. when the first green block was drawing I asked them to predict what would happen to the probabilities of each colour.
Overall what started as a sidetrack, developed into some really great thinking, on some really important concepts and I couldn't be prouder of that lot today.
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Senior Leader of Pedagogical Innovation and Mathematics Coordinator in Regional South Australia.
DisclaimerOpinions in this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent the views of my employer. Archives
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