Ambiguous Sports Graph

Outstanding teaching! Something, sadly, that is nearly impossible in urban high schools because of the extent teacher hands are tied by inept and competing mandates. 😦 But also an example of a class success that should be the goal of all our efforts to fix the REAL problems every teacher in every urban high school faces every day! It led me to a sleepless night, last night, writing a companion blog piece that I will post next, comparing the classroom environment that unleashes a teacher the caliber of Ms. Kohl versus the typical environment of a standard class in an urban high school.

Enjoy this repost!

Growing Exponentially

“Oh shit, I think I just changed my mind.” -Student

Today in class we talked about the above graph. For 45 minutes. One graph. And almost every single one of my students was engaged the entire time. Here’s what happened…

During the summer I attended an institute at Boston University on facilitating productive math conversations. We learned how to set up norms for math talk and how to use talk moves (student and teacher ones) to help us facilitate the conversation. Luckily, I attended this institute with a fantastic colleague, and we have been able to share strategies as we start to implement more math talk in our classrooms. My colleague has used the original graph for years, but now it’s more clear what we want the students to talk about and how we want them to do it.

Student goals for this lesson:
• Describe the behavior of the…

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