This week I tried the Human Scatter Graph again, but using the modification. Read about that here.
Math FACT # 22 page 104.
Before teaching a lesson on patterns I gave the students a multiple choice problem and asked them to answer the question and rate their confidence on a scale of 1 - 10 (1 being a guess and 10 betting your life on the answer). I marked those results in pink.
I taught the lesson.
After the lesson I gave the students the exact same problem with the same conditions and marked those results in blue.
By the way, the correct answer was A.
Here is the question:
The first five terms of a sequence are given below:
10, 17, 24, 31, 38, ...
Determine which of the following formulas gives the nth term of this sequence.
A) 3 + 7n
B) 16 - 6n
C) 4 + 6n
D) 17 - 7n
Reflection Questions (Page 37):
Were your students engaged? Mostly, it was a multiple choice question. How engaged would you be?
Were you confident and excited about using the FACT? Confident? Yes. Excited? No, not excited. I was looking forward to it, but it's not the excitement that's created when conducting and up-and-out-of-your-seat activity.
How did use of the FACT affect the student-to-student or student-teacher dynamic? I don't think any of that was affected. I ask questions all the time in class. This was nothing new.
Was the information gained from the FACT useful to you? Yes, I was able to see that the lesson was effective and that the students' confidence grew.
Would you have gotten the same information without using the fact? I may have done a pre- and post- question to see what knowledge was gained, but I wouldn't have known how their confidence grew.
What added value did the FACT bring to teaching and learning? I'm a big believer in student confidence leading to student learning. Because not only did the students state that their confidence grew, but they could see it in a visual representation. Maybe a few more students will start to think that they can learn math. For this lesson on patterns the students were especially whiny. Many times they complained that they didn't understand and that it was "stupid". But at the end of class when I showed them the chart, you could see their faces brighten up.
Did using the FACT cause you to do something differently or think differently about teaching and learning? I like that this FACT asked students their confidence. I never thought about making that visible before.
Would you use this FACT again? Yes, especially for those difficult lessons where students usually struggle. I like that even though the students feel like they know nothing, you can show them that they indeed do know something.
Are there modifications you could make to this FACT to improve its usefulness? I wouldn't use a scale of 1-10 again. I would use this in conjunction with the FACT: Fist to 5 (#16 page 92), where the horizontal axis would be from 0 - 5 using the Fist to 5 descriptions.
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