Last Thursday evening, I met with the K-12 collaborative group to discuss the most recent task we had taught. Our K-12 group meets once a month. We choose a low-floor/high ceiling task, do the math together, plan how we will adapt the task for our students, teach the task, and then reflect on the lesson together. The task we were debriefing is from the Georgia Math Curriculum. The task is based on a visual pattern that looks like this:

The first thing we did was look at the content standards for our grade level and reflect on how we may or may not have addressed them during our lesson. I chose to try this pattern with first grade students. It was not my finest teaching. I am not upset about it. My comfort zone is grades 3-8. It was a real stretch for me to try this task with first graders. That is why I did it. I learned a ton. I haven’t had a chance to write a separate blog post about it, but you can read Jamie’s, Abby’s, and Sue’s if you want more background about the task.

Here are my thoughts about my lesson:

You can take a look at everyone else’s reflections here. We were able to introduce the task at every grade level, K-12, including a Special Education classroom and a Life Skills classroom.

Next, we shared our thoughts.  Our conversation reminded me of the conversation I was having with third graders in Cassie’s classroom on Wednesday. Jaime started the conversation by sharing a question that one of her third grade students asked, “Can you ever have a problem with two unknowns?” Listen to where the conversations leads:

In my last post, I described how several third grade students were wondering about Algebra.  What is it?  Do we do it or is it something that lives at the middle and high school?  Is it just a bunch of expressions with letters or boxes or smiley faces in them? Talking with my colleagues about our lessons left me wondering about how I would define Algebra.  Maybe define is the wrong word.  I don’t want to look it up. I want to own it.  I want it to be alive for me, like it was when I was talking with my colleagues.  I want it to be alive for my students.