Lesson Study Cycle 2​
Research Theme: How can we foster a student-centered classroom with respect to equity over equality?
How can we incorporate voice and choice while supporting students to have access to any problem, but also, meet students where they are at?
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Content Understanding Goal:
Students will understand…
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a comparison relationship with an unknown difference (numbers) and understand a relationship between addition and subtraction (algebra).
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that they have access to a multitude of mathematical strategies to solve problems.
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Lesson Plan
If we make students' innovative thinking visible while students are grappling with subtraction in a real-world context, then students will have multiple modes of access to the problem while seeing value in their peers and their own mathematical thinking.
Before the Lesson
Our group worked together alongside our knowledgeable other to work anticipate different strategies that students would use to approach a question that can be solved using subtraction or addition. We used this anticipatory planning to identify strategies that students would come up with that should be highlighted by the teacher. The host teacher then created a poster of four different strategies curated from her students' work on a similar problem the previous day to the lesson. This poster would provide an anchor for students to refer to during the lesson study lesson.
Lesson Strategy
1. Introduce the problem to the entire group together. Students were asked to annotate the words of the question to identify important information. A comprehension questions was asked of the group to ensure all students could enter the problem with direction toward a solution.
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2. Students bring the paper with the written question back to their seats to begin attempting the strategy that first comes to mind for them. They have access to a variety of tools as well as their peers.
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3. The sheet of paper where the students are writing their solution has a second box to enter a different solution from their own. Students are encouraged to use the anchor chart or talk to their peers to arrive at a strategy different from their own.
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4. Students who are able to complete the problem using two strategies have the option of attempting a similar problem with larger values on the back side of the same paper. Students are able to use the same strategies as they did on the front or choose new strategies if they prefer. They again are asked to provide at least two different strategies to arrive at the same solution.​
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5. The group comes back to the carpet to review the strategies that have been used on their papers. The host teacher selects a few students to come to the whiteboard and share the strategies that they wrote on the paper. The other students are asked to compare the strategies to their own and determine why they are all equivalent.
Reflection
Pushing students to consider and value each other's ideas is possibly the most important aspect of building a math classroom culture that is rigorous and inviting for all students. One step in the process of building such a culture is exposing students to multiple methods of solving problems. When students begin trying strategies of their peers and are able to confirm or correct their own thinking, they see the value of multiple strategies but more importantly the value of their classmates' ideas. Students showed inherent understanding of this concept with their willingness to talk to their neighbors and look at posters with multiple strategies on the wall. To further emphasize the importance, in future lessons the reconvening as a whole group after student work could be leveraged to have students grapple with the different strategies that were used. This would push students to find similarities between strategies and discover deeper connections about addition and subtraction. Having students use each other's strategies opposed to simply observing their application, lends credibility to other students' ideas and encourages a culture where all members of the community are valued for their ideas.