Notice and Wonder #sol20

It was a rough morning before I even walked into my classroom. I guess the day can only go up from there.

And, of course, it did.

One of the classes that I teach is an accelerated 5th grade math class. They tend to know a lot of the material that we are learning already, so I like to gauge their background knowledge at the beginning of a new series of learning.

We did that today with angles and angle properties.

I learned a lot about them as mathematicians (they don’t know how to name and write angles), inquirers (what is the point of this diagram?!), and thinkers (they know about angles around a point and on a line, but they don’t know about opposite angles).

This is a “notice and wonder” activity, a format that I learned about from 3-Act Tasks. I don’t post a question along with it, because I am genuinely curious to see what they see and are thinking about when they look at it.

I like walking around the room and listening to them talk about math. I like listening to them figure something out (that sharp intake of breath), and I like listening to them argue with their group-mates. I like giving them the opportunity to get curious about something without having to “find the answer”, and I like watching them grapple with what to do with someone else’s wrong noticing (we rotate around to each problem in small groups). The math class is loud and excited, and they get to practice so many skills in this short activity: collaboration, thinking, questioning, debating, reasoning, explaining.

Just a little look inside the math class that pulled me out of my funk from this morning.