Michelle teaches a combined Grade 3/4 class. She is nearing the end of her measurement unit and wanted to spend a few days working with her students on noticing the relationships between days, weeks, months and years. She used a previous EQAO multiple choice question as the base for her lesson. However, instead of it being a multiple choice question she opened it up to an open problem. For her Grade 4 students, Michelle wanted to review what they knew about this concept and see what other strategies they were able to apply to help them solve the problem. This concept is one that is really based in application. Are the students able to apply what they know about the passage of time and the relationships between days to weeks and weeks to months? And are they able to apply a strategy to help them show their understanding (e.g., adding, skip counting, fractions)?
Her lesson started off with the learning goal and success criteria clearly posted.
The students then were given this problem as their minds on:
They did a think-pair-share with their elbow partner to share what their thinking was. Michelle then filtered in some accountable talk by having the students share the answer that their partner said. This was recorded in blue on the chart to help illustrate the thinking on paper.
For their action the students did a similar problem as in the minds on:
The students were reminded to use the success criteria to help them with their answer. They also were reminded to show their work clearly and to explain their final answer.
When the students were done Michelle did a Bansho of the strategies that they used. She had the students talk about what was similar in all of their answers, and had them name the strategy that they used. In total the students were able to come up with 7 different strategies. They were:
Michelle then had the students give each other some descriptive feedback on what they did well, and what they could do to improve. A great lesson with a lot of learning!
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