Three Part Lesson: Comparing Heights

This is a summary of the three part math lesson a group of visiting teachers were able to observe in Iain's Grade 3/4 classroom.

Prior Learning:

Prior to this lesson, students in both grades had experiences:

- using a ruler (broken ones that had no zeros so they could focus on the spaces between the numbers)

- measuring objects around the classroom and school

- using decimetres

- conversions between different units

Learning Goal:

Iain felt that students were not getting the 'contexts' in their core text book so he wanted to use a real-life problem that would tell him if he needed to move on in the unit or continue working on this concept.

Groupings:

Students worked in mixed pairs.  Some worked with another person in the same grade while others worked with someone from a different grade level.  Some students chose to work alone.  This was a choice that Iain allowed his students to have.

Part 1: Getting Started

The class had just received a new Promethean board so Iain shared a problem he noticed that students had been having with using it (they can't reach the top).  So he asked the class for some thoughts on how to solve this problem.

Part 2: Working on It

Iain introduced the problem to the whole class.  He shared with the class that he decided to get a stool for students to use when writing on the Promethean board.  But he wanted to know DID HE CHOOSE THE RIGHT STOOL?

To differentiate between the two grades, he got two stools: one for a typical Grade 3 student (Janojan) and one for a typical Grade 4 student (Maaz).

To help students visualize the problem, he got Janojan and Maaz to come up and get measured so students could see exactly how high each student could reach to write on the board.

Of course, everyone in the class wanted to me measured and see how high on the IWB they could reach!

Once students got working, there were several types of strategies used and thinking demonstrated:

STUDENT COULD NOT PROVE HOW HE KNEW JANOJAN COULD REACH THE TOP OF THE BOARD

ADDITION

ADDITION WITH THE USE OF TWO DIFFERENT UNITS

CONVERSION OF UNITS

CONVERSION OF UNITS PLUS REASONING

Part 3: Reflecting and Connecting

While solved this problem, it was obvious to Iain that all of them understood the concept so he did not use a traditional math congress structure to consolidate their understanding.  Instead he asked students: "How do we know he can reach?".  The discussion that followed focused students on the importance of providing proof or evidence to support their answer.

Explicit Teaching:

Iain focused on teaching students how to record and add measurements that have two different units.  For example, 190cm is the same as 1 m 90 cm (Grade 3s) and 175 cm + 3 dm = 205 cm (Grade 4s).

Three Part Lesson: Rounding and Estimating

This is a summary of the three part math lesson we were fortunate to observe in Iain's Grade 3/4 classroom.

Prior Learning:

Prior to this lesson, students explored numbers.  This is an anchor chart Iain created with both grade levels.

Learning Goal:

Iain wanted students to understand when to use precise numbers and when to use rounded or estimated numbers.  In addition to this, he wanted both grade groups to understand how to round by 10, 100, and 100.

Groupings:

Students worked in mixed pairs.  Some worked with someone else in the same grade while others worked with someone from a different grade level.  Some students chose to work alone.  This was a choice that Iain allowed his students to have.

Part 1: Getting Started

Using a think-pair-share, Iain reviewed previous discussions about when to use precise (or exact) numbers or when to estimate.  He also reviewed the anchor chart with the whole class (Grades 3+4)

Part 2: Working on It

Iain introduced the problem to the whole class.  He was very intentional about choosing a real life context for this lesson.

As students worked on the problem, they used several strategies to solve this problem:

Problem Solving Strategy: Draw a picture or Diagram

Problem Solving Strategy: Draw a table

Problem Solving Strategy: Logical Reasoning

Problem Solving Strategy: Repeated Addition

Part 3: Reflecting and Connecting

Instead of using a traditional math congress structure, Iain got all pairs to partner up with each other and share their thinking with each other.  

 Explicit Teaching;

After hearing from a few pairs about their strategy, Iain explicitly taught both grade groups how to round by 10, 100, and 1000.

Independent Practice:

Iain differentiated the independent practice of the concepts by asking students to complete specific questions from their core text book.

Conventions of Nonfiction Texts

Exploring nonfiction text features, conventions and structures are fundamental components of a reading program.  Much of the reading we do as adults is nonfiction, and much of the texts that many of our students enjoy are from that genre as well.  When looking at our classroom collection, we need to be very critical of the texts included in our libraries and think about how we can include more nonfiction.


Iain's class explored nonfiction conventions together, reading nonfiction books on topics they are interested in.  Together, they deconstructed those conventions to understand a key question: how do these features help me better understand the text?  It is irrelevant whether students remember the conventions if they don't know why they exist in the first place.


Using his new Promethean board, Iain, along with his students, put together some examples of different nonfiction conventions, after spending some time discussing them and sharing as a class.  The focus always remains constant: how does this convention help the reader?

Here are a couple of Iain's anchor charts that he co-created with his students on the different conventions:

Students worked on their own conventions notebook with different books of interest to each of them.  In this way, students self-selected their books and the topics they wanted to read about.  Iain then threaded in some lessons from his Science and Social Studies topics to model and guide students in their learning of the conventions. 

Students work with the different texts independently, or with a partner, to discover how the conventions help them, as readers.

From their exploration of nonfiction conventions, Iain has tied in the concept of main idea with the genre.  He worked on main idea quite a bit with fiction texts, and now he has connected the learning using nonfiction.  They were asked to look at one page of their book and identify the conventions they found and state the main idea for the page.  This allowed students to see how things like the heading, or the captions under pictures, help to create the main idea.

An important question that teachers often ask is: how can I include more nonfiction in my classroom library?  Nonfiction texts are much more expensive to purchase and so those bins are often sparse.  Pulling books from the school library, especially on the topics you are working on from your content areas, is always a fabulous way to include more nonfiction.  Here, Iain has created a display of books for students to access and he has a few more spread out in his classroom.

To explore nonfiction text conventions and features, in her book Nonfiction Reading Power, Adrienne Gear suggests using Seymour Simon's books.  He has a wonderful collection of nonfiction books but he doesn't use nonfiction conventions.  Analyzing these texts will help students see how important these features and conventions are to us, as readers.

Three Part Lesson: Sorting Figures (3-D Solids)

This is the 3-part lesson we observed in Iain's classroom.  

Prior learning:

This was one of the first lessons in the Geometry unit.  It was a diagnostic task.

Combined Grade Note:

Both grades completed this lesson.

Learning Goal:

Iain's goal of the lesson was to find out his students prior knowledge of geometric properties.

Part 1: Getting Started:

Iain showed the whole class some 3-D figures and asked them to share what they knew about them.  

Part 2: Working on It

Iain introduced the problem to the whole class.  Students read through it in pairs.  

Iain also went through the criteria for a good response.

The routine in Iain's classroom is that students can choose to work alone or in pairs.  

Here are some student responses:

Part 3: Reflecting and Connecting (Consolidation)
Rather than a traditional congress with 2 or 3 pairs sharing in front of the whole group, Iain asked students to form small groups.  Students had to share with each other within each small group. Then each small group presented to the whole class what they found out.

* If you find that your students are very quiet during a math congress, you might want to take a step back and try this method.  Every participates!


Part 3: Explicit Teaching
After students had a chance to share what they found out, Iain moved on to the explicit teaching part of the lesson.  This allowed him to clear up any misconceptions and take the lesson to where he wanted.

Iain and the class discussed how they would sort Alana's figures.  This is what they came up with.  The idea of sorting by two properties was made explicit with the Venn diagram.

Part 4: Practice

Iain always plans for a part 4 in his lessons (He calls them 4-part lessons).  This practice piece usually involve questions from the core textbook or a small investigation.

This particular investigation was taken from Nelson Grade 4, page 295.  Students used polydrons (nets) to investigate the relationship of the numbers of edges, vertices, faces on pyramids and prisms.

Iain consolidated this portion of the lesson with this chart:

One of the things to keep in mind when using the 3-part lesson format is that you're not stuck within these three parts.  You can go in and out of each part as you need to.  Iain's lesson is a great lesson of that!