My First Act

Setting the scene:  As soon as I got back I talked to my students about how I had learned so many great things that I was excited to try out in the classroom.  One of the first sessions I had attended was on 3 Act Math.  I had seen this topic presented in staff developments before, but the idea of making videos and coming up with lessons just seemed so daunting.  But at NCTM I discovered that teachers really want to share resources, and there were so many lesson already out there to get me started.

So after returning to my classroom, I made one simple change and took my 6 rows of desks and pushed them into pairs.  This was my way of forcing myself to develop and encourage discussion between my students.  I knew that if I didn't give them good guidance this would simply lead to a lot of “noise” in the classroom.  So I dove right in with a 3 Act Lesson that I found on Andrew Stradel’s site. https://docs.google.com/a/simivalleyusd.org/spreadsheets/d/19sms4MpuAOO71o4qFPJyVKK-OGLnNegMgSL6WAwIdb8/edit#gid=0

I was about to introduce surface area and decided to do the file cabinet activity with my students.  

The introduction is a video of someone covering a file cabinet with post it notes.  It shows the cabinet partially covered and poses the question:  How many post it will it take to cover the cabinet?

I then had my student talk about it and come up with a list of information they felt they would need to answer the question.  They were talking, and for the most part it was about math.  No one was sleeping, no one was begging to go to the bathroom, they were all discussing and making predictions.  Then I gave them the dimensions of the cabinet and told them to come up with their best “guess”.  

So after about 20 minutes I drew a chart on the board to track their guesses, well here I discovered that I needed to help guide them a little more.  The first group looked at me with wide eyes and asked: “we had to actually come up with a real answer?”  As I went around I discovered only about half of the groups had used any “math” to get their guess.  

Time to redirect, so I explained that this would be a competition and the groups with the right answer would win a prize, and sent them back to the drawing board for 10 more minutes.  They started sketching the cabinet, calculating how many post its would fit on each surface.  Some asked to replay the video, was the top being covered too?

After 10 minutes I recorded each group’s’ guess. The kids were reacting to each other's answer, asking the groups how they got it.  So I called up groups who wanted to explain their reasoning to come up and show how they got their answer.  Then we watched the solution, and the reactions were exciting.  Kids cheered as they discovered their answers were close.    They were ALL engaged and listening.  

At the end of my first week back during my 7am class I overhead a few students talking about their teachers and teaching styles.  (This class is an RTI class that they take as an elective).  One of my math students was explaining to the others that in Mrs. Van Keulen’s class they now had to do all the work.  That they got to talk, and explain and that it was fun.  She said that she was learning so much more now, and that she actually had to think.  

So there have been bumps, and I have been frustrated at times, but overall I am having more fun, and I think the kids are too.