Video #2 - Lessons On Graphs- Grade 7

Purpose of the Activity

In this activity the teacher wanted her students to understand the ideas of graphs, how to make them, and what goes into a graph. She had her students first make up their own graphs and use them to tell a short story. She then put the students in groups and they worked together on figuring out graphs. She wants her students to be able to see how graphs and tables relate, and how to read them in an appropriate way. She also wants to make sure that her students can express what the graphs and tables say verbally to their small groups and also to the class. She would also constantly check with her class during the lessons and ask questions to check for understanding of the topic being presented, and also of previous topics presented.

3 questions from lesson
From Discourse: Orchestrating
Lesson Analysis 2: Describe what the teacher does to support learning while students are working in groups.
Something that I really enjoy that the teacher does is she goes to the small groups and asks them if they had any questions. She then asks them to tell her what they did to find their answer. This way she knows what the students have done wrong, so she can guide them in the right direction. For example she asked the students "What does the questions say? How much money would you have..." and she lets the students answer "left". She than explains to the small group what the subject is, and the students begin to work together and understand what the problem is asking with the teachers guidance and help from their other group members. This teacher does an excellent job of providing guidance to her students to figure out the answers, instead of just telling her students how to do the problems. You can tell that she really wants her students to figure out the answers on her own, and also to not just give them the answer or how to do find answer. Her strategies are really shown to be beneficial because as she guides her students you can tell that they begin to understand and start explaining the correct way to do the problem to their teacher. She also let the students choose their own groups, even though it was a risky decision, it was very beneficial because students felt comfortable to work together with their friends.

Discourse: Alternative Questioning
Lesson Analysis 1: Identify three questions that were asked during the lesson and propose and justify an alternative way that the question could have been asked.
1) "Yesterday they said 300, do you know why?" She than began to explain the answer to her class. I believe that it would have been more beneficial if she had given her students the opportunity to ask this question. In stead of saying "why" and than answering the question herself, she should have allowed time for her students to answer "why the students had said 300 yesterday". The "whys" in mathematics are very important and it is important to make sure that your students understand them.
2) "What did I say yesterday was an ordered pair? A relation. Correct". Once again the teacher answered her own question without giving her students an opportunity to answer the questions themselves. If the students had already learned about ordered pairs, then she should have said, "Now who remembers what an ordered pair is?" This is would have allowed the students an opportunity to check their knowledge and make sure they remember things that they have gone over before.
3)"How about the Nth one". When the teacher asked this I'm not sure if the students really understood what the "Nth one" meant. The teacher could have said "we are going to say the Nth one, and that means that we can put any number there and figure out the question." After she explained that, than she would be able to go back and talk about the "nth" one without explaining it.

The Mathematics: Connections
Lesson Analysis 1: Identify four different contexts and/or connections made in this lesson.
1) "when we were younger and doing story graphs..because I cook I thought of an oven, I thought of the literature of the oven"- She related the graphs back to cooking in an oven
2) "what did I say earlier was an ordered pair?" - She related this lesson back to an earlier lesson that were working on in the one of the first videos.
3) "Could I ever have a negative amount of money in my pocket?" The teacher was telling the students that you could not have a negative number in this situation by relating it back to how you can never have negative money in your pocket.
4)"What day do you guys want to pick?" She related their lesson back to things that were more relate able to the students.

Overall Thoughts on Video
I thought that this lesson can be very useful one day. The teacher used topics that would be interesting to the students, especially how she let them begin by making their own graphs and tables on anything that they chose. The thing that I really learned form this videos though were not the actual lesson. It was more of the way she handled her classroom. I think she did a very good job in this aspect. Throughout the lessons she would always ask questions to promote more learning for her students, and to make sure her students understood the topic and what was going on. Another thing that I enjoyed was that when she was working with the students in small groups and they would ask her questions, she would not just give them the answer or how to do it. She would find out how the students did the problem in the first place, and then ask them questions to guide them on the way to the correct answer. Another thing that she really did well was she always reinforced her students correct answers in a positive way. She would say things like "Oh you are so great, you are so right!". You could tell that the students enjoyed this because so many of the students would always try to participate. Overall I really enjoyed this lesson and the way in which the teacher taught it.