Video Blog #1

The purpose of the activities in these videos were to show students how to see patterns in the letters of words. They were told to give a number scale to each of the letters in the alphabet 1-26. There were different tables of students and each table was in sort of a competition to get the highest number of points for all of their names. In order to do this efficiently the students had to notice which letters in their names appeared more frequently than other. For example, if all of the people at the table had an A in their name, than they would put A at a higher number on the scale. The students seemed to really enjoy this game and really get involved. A couple of times the student did get confused but the teacher would always

Discourse - Questioning
Reflective Task 2: Propose one or two summary questions that could have been used at the end of the lesson to make the mathematics clearer and more explicit to the students.
1) Why were some of your words worth more even though they were very short?
2) How can you go about choosing point values for words to be worth a lot of points, or less points?

Student Learning- Assessing
Lesson Analysis 1: Describe, with examples, how the teacher determined if students understood the tasks that were assigned.
1) She asked a group what their problem was that they had.
2) She also used examples to describe how in a team sometimes you may have to go down, in order for your team to raise up. She followed that from an example that a student had said.
3) This assessment was more informal. The teacher stated that for this lesson can better know if the students understand the information by going around and listening and asking questions. I agree, throughout the videos it seems as if she was assessing the whole time. Making sure that the students understood what was going on during each activity.

Teaching Decisions- Evidence
Lesson Analysis 1: Provide three examples of evidence that students have learned the mathematics being taught.
1) One of the tables of students figured out that the most common letters in their names at their table so they gave those two letters the highest value. That way their final score would be higher. They were looking for patterns.
2) Another group of students realized a pattern in their names as well. They realized that they all had A’s in their name so they gave the letter A the highest point value.
3) A table also gave themselves “0”’s for the letter B, because they noticed that no one at their table had the letter B in their names.

Overall I thought that the activities used in this video were beneficial. It allowed students to be able to start to think about patterns and also to think strategically. I also enjoyed how throughout the videos the teacher kept asking the students questions and keeping them engaged. She also answered many of the students questions very appropriately as well. The students really interested in the activity as well. You could sense by their comments and expression that they were really enjoying what they were doing . The students had to sit down and think about everyone's names at their tables and determine what the most frequent letters were. This seemed like a fun activity that one day I may want to try with my students.