Is there a difference in it Happening and Making it Happen?

If you’ve noticed, I’ve been writting rather extensively about my geometry class in a the private section of my blog. I’ve really been focusing on fostering reasoning and sense making in the class by promoting and looking at classroom discussion. I teach two of these classes and their classroom discussion dynamics are slightly different. This has really made me think about the difference in the two classes and the ways that I have to really encourage certain aspects of a lesson in one class and the other flows naturally. Today’s lesson one finding the relationship between volume of prisms and pyramids with identical bases and heights went really well; however, it seemed like I really forced some of the same aspects in my second class that flowed naturally in my first. I wonder if the lesson would have been just as good for the kids if I wouldn’t have forced some of the same insights that were found in my first class. Did the insights that they saw really play a critical role in the understanding of the concepts of volume? (No). I believe if I would have allowed students to develop the main concepts more adequately the second go around, this would have helped develop a better environment for student discussion. Students would have began to respect their own ideas and look to one another for clarification and justification rather than myself. Small things like this really play a crictical role in setting up your classroom for good student discourse.

Protected: Persistence

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Protected: Student Statistical Interest

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Protected: Making Connections in Geometry

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Protected: Motivation and Discourse

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Protected: Discourse in my Classroom

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Protected: Comparing Two Classes

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