Analyzing the difference in the Act 1's

My last post involved two act 1's that I put up.

One of them was about the sinkhole that occurred last week.

And the other one was on a few pictures I took at the pet food store.

I wanted to dig a bit deeper on the differences between the two.

The sinkhole picture, let's call it A, is a situation that's hot, fresh, and interesting.  It happened not that long ago, and kids are instantly excited to talk about it.  They had all sorts of questions that popped up.  Since they were sitting in a math classroom, some of them even came up with some math questions.  Perfect.  We meant to do this.

The pet food pictures, let's call it B, is a situation that built with the intention of discussing a particular topic in mathematics.  Kids are still excited to talk about it, but it took having to focus and zoom into the parts we actually "cared" about.  Of course, I still indulged other good questions that didn't have things to do with math, but primarily there was a goal.  The goal was fractions, percentages, value, division...etc.

So therein lies the major difference, I think.  A is driven primarily by an exciting situation that deserves talking about, while B is driven primarily by a mathematical topic that deserves talking about.

Both A and B ultimately achieves the goal of getting students excited and talking about mathematics, but this links to what I mentioned before about spiraling the curriculum.

I have not been able to go full blast just spiraling the curriculum just yet, because there are several factors that prevents me to go off and do it this year.  I would say that A has more of the "spiraling flavour" to it.  It's interesting and the questions that pop up links to multiple areas in the curriculum that I am currently working with:

• speed of the car - linear function
• braking while the car stops - non-linear function
• the size of the sinkhole - volume
• The rate at which the car sinks - linear (or non-linear functions)
• the cause of the sinkhole (outside curriculum but links mathematics to other interesting areas)
• ... and so on

Ideally we would spend a few classes exploring different aspects of this question.  We give them information as they need them.  We measure the length of the car to approximate depth of the car according to the picture.  we make assumptions on the time difference between each picture...etc.

We would then link them back to the strands and overall expectations of this course, and students fill in what they have learned.  They frame and organize what they have learned into the established chunks of concepts.

Instead, we primarily focused on B.  Don't get me wrong, I still love the rich discussions that come out of B.  There are still lots to learn about the aspects of B -- but B was narrow.  B was planned for a more narrow focus on value.

Maybe having both A and B is fine -- and it probably is -- I just wanted to elaborate a bit more on the spiraling concept, and to differentiate it slightly from the other "kind" of act 1.

But regardless of which one I use in the classroom, I love both of them.  I love the fact the students are investigating, thinking, discussing, arguing, and learning.