Word Problem Clues Video

I loved the first clip of this video right from the start. I think it was great that they pulled together a group of so many educators to discuss a common issue this second grade teacher was seeing in her classroom. I thought this was a good process to go through to get more insight into what the teacher's thinking process was while coming up with this reengagement lesson, and it will also benefit everyone in the end because they will be able to give her more feedback after the lesson is completed.

What I really liked about how the beginning of the lesson was going was how she had larger examples on posters of some of the students' work to show the students as they sat down in front of them. This way, the students were able to see many different ways that other students figured out the word problems. The only thing that I didn't like about this part of the lesson was that I think Ms. Lewis did spend a little too much time on the previous examples and it was sometimes unorganized discussion with the students about each problem. If she would have organized this section a little more, there would have been more time at the end for the students to be correcting their papers and talking with their classmates.

Another thing that I really liked was how Ms. Lewis constantly encouraged the students to use correct vocabulary when speaking about the word problems. We can see this connect back to the standard of Attending to Precision, where the goal is to be able to use and understand correct mathematics vocabulary and be able to communicate your work clearly to others.

The final debriefing section was a wonderful way for Ms. Lewis to reflect on her lesson and talk with the group about what she thought went well, and what she would have liked to have done differently. The ending clip here also brought to my attention how affective only watching this series of video clips was. It brought to my attention the many ways that we can get students involved in learning math processes as an entire class in the way that they shared with partners and discussed different strategies. It also brought to my attention that even the younger students can learn to self-correct and are able to explain their thought process when given the opportunity.