Show students the following video:
Then, ask students:
What do you notice?
What do you wonder?
Have students do a Think-Pair-Share routine:
- Students have individual think time to jot down ideas on paper or whiteboard (minimum 1 minute). Students may benefit from watching the video a second time or having a still image from the video to refer to.
- Students share their observations and questions with a partner.
- Students share as a whole group, either their own noticings and wonderings, or a meaningful observation or question they heard from their partner during the share (while giving credit to their partner). All contributions are acknowledged and recorded on an anchor chart on the board.
Possible points that may come up include:
- I notice there’s a person playing with a soccer ball – it’s the same kid as [Day 1]
- I wonder how many times they can kick the ball in the air without losing it
- I notice that they are trying to do a pattern
- I wonder if he’s going to keep up the pattern or change it
- I wonder if it’s harder to do kick ups with the right or left foot
- I wonder if it’s easier to do kick ups with socks or with shoes (why did the person take off their shoes?)
Students may or may not have noticed the pattern in which the person kicks the ball three times with his right foot for every one time with his left. Consider showing students the following video where a closeup will hopefully reveal the pattern:
Then, ask students:
What else do you notice?
What else do you wonder?
At this point, if students have not yet noticed the “3 right- 1 left: pattern, consider bringing it to their attention. You may also wish to point out that the very first kick up doesn’t count as it is used to get the ball in the air.
Spending time to acknowledge and address specific thoughts that students shared, whether a notice or a wonder, is crucial to building a culture in your classroom where students know that their voice is being valued and thus encourages them to continue sharing their thoughts and opinions later in this lesson and in future lessons.
Once student noticings and wonderings have been acknowledged and noted, the class can settle on a first question to explore:
How many kick ups are completed with the right foot?
Make an estimate.
Students begin by making an estimate before they are provided with all the information they need to answer the question, thus requiring them to consider what would be a reasonable number of kick ups.
Encouraging students to begin by considering estimates that are “too high” and “too low” will provide a range within which more likely estimates can be framed. It can also provide students who may be reluctant to share with a safe entry point. Students can then make a “reasonable estimate”, which they will have a chance to revise.
Be sure not to skip over asking students to make an estimate despite not having all the necessary information as this is a very important step in the Curiosity Path. Providing students with an opportunity to make an estimate and try to articulate their thinking with their peers provides a very low floor opportunity for them to not only better understand the context, but to also begin nudging them to think about what will be important to make their estimate more precise as we continue through the lesson.
Students should be given an opportunity to share their estimates at this point, but refrain from sharing their rationale just yet in order to give everyone a chance to develop their own thinking.
Have students turn to a partner and generate questions they could ask that would provide them with information they could use to answer the question. Ask students how they would use the information to answer the question.
Prompt:
What information would you need to answer the question?
How would you use that information?
After students share some of what they notice and wonder about the shapes that have ‘popped’ on the screen, continue playing the video until the next prompt appears:
Describe as many relationships as you can between the circles and the squares.
Reveal to the students the video of the first 33 kick ups which took a total of 17 seconds to complete.
At this point, students may wish to update their estimates. Provide them with time to do so before revealing the next image. A simple prompt might be:
The person in the video did a total of 33 kick ups in 17 seconds, not including the first “kick” to get the ball in the air.
Update your estimate for how many kick ups the person completed with their right foot.
Provide students with time to revise their estimates.
Listen and observe as students revise their estimates. Are students aware that the layered structure of a rectangular prism allows them to think additively or use multiplication?
How are students approaching the problem? What strategies and mathematical models are they leveraging? Are they:
- Basing estimates on their own experiences with soccer, juggling, or other similar activity? (It’s harder to keep up a pattern, so maybe they won’t go for very long?)
- Basing estimates on the amount of time it would take to do more kick ups? (Can they keep going for a full minute? 2 minutes? 10 minutes?)
This is an opportunity to make note of where students are developmentally. Prompt students to explain their thinking and how they plan to use their model/strategy to how many “kick ups” the person can do.
Download the videos, images, and related media files to your computer to avoid streaming.
Download in Apple Keynote format to avoid streaming video and run the lesson smoothly.
Download in Microsoft PowerPoint format to avoid streaming video and run the lesson smoothly.
