So I jumped into WCYDWT head first. Had an idea tried it out, and man did I learn a bunch (I am not sure yet about the kids). Highlights of the whole experience are as follows:
- The students who were engaged were engaged to the greatest extent that I have seen in my class (in my math class at least, science usually does the trick no matter how boring I am).
- Some students wanted to keep working on it even after I had to move on.
- The answer became the reward to most kids!
- There was never a point where I felt like the lesson was dragging.
The difficulties were:
- Students who still simply did not want to try.
- Students that had nothing to show for the time we spent on this.
- Giving just enough information to push them forward.
- Connecting the lesson goal with the actual activity (students stretched their mathematical muscle, but did they learn about balancing equations, well no we ran out of time).
To walk you through what I did I will give you the rest of my lesson in pieces. First of was the Prezi I created.
It was really just a vessel for some of the rest of the lesson, but I hope you enjoy my design. We had previously talked about how equations needed to be kept on balance, like a scale (hence the design in my prezi. I ended off with using a virtual manipulative and some text book (I am sorry, but I am just learning this!)
As you can see I just jumped into the question. I told my students I was shopping online, and asked them where they shop online. Then I turned my projector on so they could see where I shopped, they recognized Amazon, and some laughter and inquisitive looks appeared. I passed around our class iPod (and my iPhone), for them to send some questions in (they like the online polls), and if that was taking too much time, I let them come write it up on the board. Take a look at the questions they came up with.
Build television sms voting polls at Poll Everywhere
The main question seemed to be "Why does it cost so much money?" A student on the board asked how many tubes did I buy, and that was where I knew I had it. I gave away a little bit of the price, because students didn't believe I actually found this on Amazon, so I searched it so it got them doing Math even quicker (which now that I think about it is a silly thing to complain about, if they want to go with it, they should). I told them that unless they got an EXACT answer, they must have been off. Decimals came in, and I told them maybe they need a bit more information. This is where my lovely information cards came in.
As they started getting closer, and closer, I would give them these information sheets, that would tell either the cost of the products, or the cost of the shipping, never both. I had them for 1, 2, and 3 tubes. I would give them one shipping cost, let them try to figure it out, and then give them the second (shipping on amazon is a base rate plus $1.25, students figured that out rather quickly when they got the sheets, I was very pleased that their knowledge of linear relations was still there). It was all great fun, and many students, that would normally cut out, kept on going with only a slight bit of prodding, or encouragement (you almost have it!), except for a minority.
Then I started realising I was running out of time. This had taken almost an hour, I loved that it flew by, but I had important "Mathwork" to do! This is where I am stuck. I do not know if I can actually direct this now to balancing equations. They didn't have to write down a single variable. I told kids who had finished to write a general equation, and they did so with flying colours, but other than that I just didn't know what to do.
I have more things to write, but this has already gone too long!
Then I started realising I was running out of time. This had taken almost an hour, I loved that it flew by, but I had important "Mathwork" to do! This is where I am stuck. I do not know if I can actually direct this now to balancing equations. They didn't have to write down a single variable. I told kids who had finished to write a general equation, and they did so with flying colours, but other than that I just didn't know what to do.
I have more things to write, but this has already gone too long!
