Christine Oglesby

This particular math lesson took off in a very magical way! We were practicing and discussing the concepts of Order of Operations and distributive Property. We were one problem away from completing a pretty long lesson and the students were ready to move on. Suddenly, one of our students, Eric, asked a brilliant question, and as soon as I realized where this conversation could go, I grabbed the iPad and asked him to repeat his question. 

The students initially began with a few answers and examples and then about 8-9 minutes into the video, the conversation just exploded. Students led and generated the entire conversation! We DREAM of this!!!

If you are not yet familiar with common Core State Standards, in addition to regular Math and LA standards, we now also have eight "Standards for Mathematical Practice."

The idea is that each lesson we do with the students should be able to incorporate one or two of these standards. The more included, the richer the lesson. These students, by themselves, demonstrated all 8. At the end of the video, I am asking them to return to their seats (usually it just takes once--they were so involved it took a second time, lol) then I began asking them about these standards.

I was trying to be very careful in how I steered the conversation.  I apologize for how loud my voice is in the video and that it feels choppy, I wanted the kids to completely own it, but still move them through a fairly delicate conversation.  I think you will be as impressed as I was with the quality of their teamwork/collaboration, leadership, conceptual development, communication skills, and mathematical understanding demonstrated and I definitely was glad to have captured some of their magic on video for you. 

Enjoy!