Task Teacher Guide
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In This Task…
Students will determine how many chairs can fit in a gym for Grade 8 Graduation.
Intentionality…
As is true for any task, the intentionality or learning objective can vary depending on what mathematical thinking you are hoping to elicit. This task is a great way to help students solve problems using multiplication with concrete and/or visual models to make connections to symbolic algorithms.
Spark
What Do You Notice? What Do You Wonder?
Show students this video:
Ask students to engage in a notice and wonder protocol. ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that comes to mind is fair game.
Here’s some of the “anything and everything” students noticed and wondered on chart paper:
- I notice the scene is a gymnasium.
- I notice basketball nets.
- I wonder why we’re looking at this video?
- I wonder if this is an elementary school or high school?
- And many others…
After taking student noticing and wondering, consider acknowledging and addressing any notices and wonderings that you can get “out of the way” at this point. For example, if a student says “what school is that?” you can say “John Campbell Public School in Windsor, Ontario.” etc.
Prompt and Estimate
Sense Making
Craft A Productive Struggle
During Moves
While Students Are Productively Struggling…
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Sample Student Response #1:
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Sample Student Response #2:
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Sample Student Response #3:
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Sample Student Response #4:
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Sample Student Response #5:
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After Moves
Consolidation
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Reveal
After consolidating learning using student generated solution strategies and by extending their thinking intentionally, we can share what really happened with this video.
Or consider showing this image:
Students (and maybe even you as the facilitator) might be shocked when they see that the total number of seats is significantly less than the 360 seats they calculated.
Share the following prompt with students to discuss further:
The actual number of seats is different than the number of seats we expected.
How many rows and how many chairs in each row did they end up using for this graduation day ceremony?
Why do you suppose they changed their original plans?
Students might share that the guest list was smaller than originally anticipated or that they needed more leg/arm room between chairs/rows, etc.
After students discuss with neighbours, modify and/or create a new model to determine the factors that would result in 286 chairs, you can share the following image to confirm their findings:
Reflect
Provide students an opportunity to reflect on their learning by offering these consolidation prompts to be completed independently.
Consolidation Prompt #1:
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Consolidation Prompt #2:
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We suggest collecting these reflections as an additional opportunity to engage in the formative assessment process to inform next steps for individual students as well as how the whole class will proceed.
Download Editable/Printable Handout
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Extension #1:
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Resources and Downloads
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Lesson Tip Sheet
Download the lesson plan in PDF format so you can keep it handy and share with colleagues.
Videos & Images
Download the videos, images, and related media files to your computer to avoid streaming.
Keynote Slides
Download in Apple Keynote format to avoid streaming video and run the lesson smoothly.
PowerPoint Slides
Download in Microsoft PowerPoint format to avoid streaming video and run the lesson smoothly.
Printable Handout
Download/Edit the handout so you can keep it handy and share with colleagues.
Explore The Entire Unit of Study
This Make Math Moments Task was designed to spark curiosity for a multi-day unit of study with built in purposeful practice, and extensions to elicit and emerge mathematical models and strategies.
Click the links at the top of this task to head to the other related lessons created for this unit of study.
Consolidation Prompt #1
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Consolidation Prompt #2
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Download Editable/Printable Handout
Become a member to access purposeful practice to display via your projector/TV, download the PDF to upload to your LMS and/or print for students to have a physical copy