Hi {{custom.firstName}},

 

In the last unit, I offered some ideas for inviting lots of thinking from lots of different kinds of students. Perhaps now you have students sharing lots of their ideas with you. Great work!

 

Now what can you do with those ideas? How can you celebrate what students are offering and help them grow their sense of themselves as mathematicians while also helping them develop that knowledge?

 

The student becomes the teacher.

 

In Is It A Circle? we love celebrating the language students bring from home to describe circles while also celebrating the value of a shared language.

On one screen, we ask students to describe four circles for someone else to recreate. This is a great opportunity to celebrate a range of student contributions, especially from students who are still developing their mathematical language. For example, one student might write:

 

She has a big circle, then 1 more little bit smaller circle in it. Then do that 1 more time and lastly on the top inside, draw one more circle.

 

This is a fantastic response because it identifies that there are four circles and that each circle is smaller than the last and inside each of the others. After celebrating what’s right about the student’s response, you might help them develop it by asking the class to engage in the Clarify, Critique, and Correct routine. 

But you might also open a screen like this one and draw the student’s description as though you had never seen the target image before. You draw their description faithfully, but it doesn’t result in the image they wanted.

 

“No no, you’re not doing it right. That’s not what I meant!” your student might object, at which point, you can invite them to teach you, now that you’ve experienced a need for greater precision.

 

Putting your students in a position to teach you is one way you can celebrate their early ideas and also support the development of those ideas as well.

 

Enjoy yourselves!

 

Dan & the Desmos Classroom Team

PS. Please give us feedback on the last lesson.

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