As my students were working on a problem the other day, I wandered around to video tape them, just to get a sense of how things work in my classroom during the "action" phase of a lesson. I caught a few students' explanations of their solutions on camera, then turned the camera off.
No sooner had a turned off the camera, then an intellectual debate broke out amongst four students -- I quickly turned the video camera back on, and caught the tail end of the argument.
At issue was the number of crossings a ferry captain has to make to get from one side of the water to the other in order to ferry a total of 26 cars across from the mainland to the airport where Ms. Teschow takes her flying lessons. (The ferry boat can hold a maximum of 8 cars per crossing.) The boy I had just been filming claimed it would take 8 crossings, however, the fellow in the zip up jacket with the orange collar claimed the number to be 7. In the snippet below, he attempts to show why. (Note that although he struggles with clearly articulating his thinking, everyone is very polite, even when they animatedly disagree. Note also zip-up guy's "patterned" diagram on his whiteboard, which we later shared in stages with the rest of the class.)
No sooner had a turned off the camera, then an intellectual debate broke out amongst four students -- I quickly turned the video camera back on, and caught the tail end of the argument.
At issue was the number of crossings a ferry captain has to make to get from one side of the water to the other in order to ferry a total of 26 cars across from the mainland to the airport where Ms. Teschow takes her flying lessons. (The ferry boat can hold a maximum of 8 cars per crossing.) The boy I had just been filming claimed it would take 8 crossings, however, the fellow in the zip up jacket with the orange collar claimed the number to be 7. In the snippet below, he attempts to show why. (Note that although he struggles with clearly articulating his thinking, everyone is very polite, even when they animatedly disagree. Note also zip-up guy's "patterned" diagram on his whiteboard, which we later shared in stages with the rest of the class.)