Something we’ve heard from teachers is that teaching is easier and learning is more effective when they’re able to invite lots of student thinking early in a lesson.
Teaching is like trying to build a house. You personally have a lot of bricks and can use them to build a certain kind of house of a certain size. It’s important to realize that students have lots of bricks to offer as well. And when you all use all of those bricks, you can build a house that is even more immense and more spectacular than the one you could build on your own. And it belongs to your entire class.
Start with the question, not the answer.
Students will offer you more thinking when they fully understand your questions. So I encourage you to look at activities in lessons like Balloon Float and ask yourself, “Can I ask a question that’ll get students talking, get their minds moving?”
For example: Will it float?
That’s a question that lots of students can hang onto throughout the activity—one that’ll orient them to the big mathematical ideas when they start to lose sight of them. It’s a question easy enough to understand that lots of different students will offer you their thoughts, which you can then use to help students develop something even more immense and more spectacular than any of you could build on your own.
Dan & the Desmos Classroom Team
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