Co-Planning, Co-Producing

Carm and Jan invited me in to co-teach with them a lesson on area using non-standard units.  Carm teaches Grade 1 and Jan teaches a combined Grade 1/2 class.  Jan and I met to plan first and decided to use an idea from the curriculum document as the action part of our lesson.  We made it a parallel task so that there was a slight difference between what the Grade 1 and Grade 2 students did.  This was done to meet the needs of the two different curriculum expectations.  When Carm and I met to plan she had already seen the lesson from Jan and we decided to use the same lesson for her Grade 1s.

Here are the learning goals that the two of them had created for area:

Minds On:  The students used large sheets of construction paper to help measure the area of the learning carpet.  Before they began, they were reminded of what estimate meant and several students took turns sharing their estimates:

When they were done estimating, they found the area and shared how they came up with their answer.  This was recorded on the bottom of our chart.  You can see that the students shared 4 different ways of counting the sheets of paper to find the area.  Great examples of how they applied what they already knew to this task.

Action: 

The students quickly went to work using square of paper to help them measure the area of the op of their desk (The paper was super cheap:  550 sheets for $1.25 at Dollarama)

The students then had a picture of their desks taken, and then they used this picture to help them complete their answer.  We saw that the students used the strategies that we talked about to help them show how they counted up to 48 to get their final answer. 

Consolidate:  The students talked about how they got their answers with a partner.

We had two great lessons in two great classes!  The students were engaged and really able to demonstrate a lot of prior knowledge when solving this task.