Reply To: Lesson 3-6: Discussion Prompt

[Stephanie Pritchett]

This week I used your sunflower model on how to solve two step equations. For the last few years I have been trying to teach my students with abstract reasoning. For this lesson I had manipulatives available to my students to come up with an expression. Most students gravitated to them almost immediately and started to use them to reason about the problem ( even though afterwards they enjoyed building other things). A physical model was so easy for them to build. From there we shared what visual models would match and then connected it to the abstract (maybe a little too soon?). It was a great start. I was a little nervous, because new things don’t always go as well as things you have done over and over. I knew by starting that this would get me to a better place as a teacher for my students, so I went for it.

[Stephanie Pritchett]

This week I used your sunflower model on how to solve two step equations. For the last few years I have been trying to teach my students with abstract reasoning. For this lesson I had manipulatives available to my students to come up with an expression. Most students gravitated to them almost immediately and started to use them to reason about the problem ( even though afterwards they enjoyed building other things). A physical model was so easy for them to build. From there we shared what visual models would match and then connected it to the abstract (maybe a little too soon?). It was a great start. I was a little nervous, because new things don’t always go as well as things you have done over and over. I knew by starting that this would get me to a better place as a teacher for my students, so I went for it.