Voices from the Field > Classroom Video 6
Voices from the Field: Orchestrating a Productive Discussion Based on a Geometry Exploration
As a teacher, the practices of recognizing, anticipating, and sequencing students’ work are essential when planning and teaching with tasks that are open-ended. In open-ended tasks, students can choose how to produce a solution and support their work with appropriate evidence and arguments. This video gives an opportunity to consider different approaches that students take to a open-ended geometry task and how a teacher asks questions to encourage students to explain and justify their work. This video is an animated depiction of actual students’ work on the dividing land investigation. The sequence of students’ work and questions posed the teacher illustrate the possibility of organizing such a discussion about students’ work. This task is from Chapter 3 of the Geometry materials. It will be useful to read a brief description of the task and use dynamic geometry to solve the task before watching the video.
Guiding Documents
The task students work on to divide land fairly among two people that is in the shape of an irregular convex quadrilateral. | Dividing Land Task |
An interactive applet made with GeoGebra that can be used to create a solution to the task. | GeoGebra File |
An interactive applet made with WebSketchpad that can be used to create a solution to the task. | WebSketchpad File |
The following questions can be used to guide discussion around this 2:03 minute video:
- After viewing students’ solutions, what features of the technology tool do you think supported their work?
- Why do you think the teacher sequenced the presentation and discussion of students’ work in the order shown?