Jessica Bisbee
Prof. Heather Roberts
Clark University
May 5, 2014
Rounds Reflection: Lance at Nativity School 3/27/14
I always find it fascinating to observe in a different building since I see UPCS so often and it is such as unique setting that sometimes I forget that other schools have different senses of school community. Nativity always is rather startling because it is even more unique. I always forget it is an all-boys school and that the classes are so small. Also, the staff rotates through different roles such as working in the office and the cafeteria.
During this round that Lance gave I was amazed to see that his class consists of four eighth grade boys. They are in a lower level class than their usual classmates. Lance, however, had asked for this particular class to combine all the boys together as his four had skills that could assist the others and vice versa. He was working with graphs and city plans with the students using the formulas for graphing different lines. He assigned groups and each group needed to use particular roles to create a made-up city with a certain number of highways, roads and raised railways. They then needed to find the formulas for these city features. The boys drew their cities on large poster-sized graph paper.
Lance had wanted the students to discover a way to write an equation for a raised structure at the beginning of class. The boys, however, struggled with how to change the formula for the line to show that it was thirty feet in the air. Lance in the interest of time explained that he could multiple each area of the equation by thirty to show this quality of the line and had students get to work in their groups.
There were four groups total. The first I observed had a very difficult time deciding on roles and following the directions. They argued continuously about who would be best suited to each role. Twenty minutes into the activity the artist was booted from their role, stated they couldn’t do it, and the role was taken by a different student. This group also didn’t use straight lines in their first draft of their city. When Lance noticed, he came over and asked how they would write a formula to represent the lines? They would have needed the formula for a parabola which a student at a nearby table recited for them. They then realized they needed straight lines, erased their city, and started again. They were behind the others.
One group that was very successful had followed the roles quite effectively from the beginning of the in class work time. They were in the back of the room. One student immediately asked students which roles they wanted to follow. They laid out their city in a hexagon shape and subsequently wrote the formula per each line as they went so they were further along than the other groups who were more concerned about the drawing than the mathematics. The group accurately wrote a formula for the top line of the hexagon, but struggled to complete the bottom formula. The assistant teacher came over and asked if the line was similar to any others they had drawn. One boy then realized it mirrored the top line, but was in negative portion of the Y axis and thus told the group it was the same but negative and another group member added it to the chart.
At the end of class students needed more time to complete their work and Lance opted to continue it in the next class period. I think since some had made some errors in the beginning it took a bit more time than was originally allotted.