Background. I’ll share an activity. Offer some ideas on what’s wrong. Invite you to share your own diagnosis/treatment. Then (end of week) share an upgraded version of the activity. (More details about this series are available here.)
Activity and Diagnosis
Some months back, I wrote an activity called Parallel Lines. Here’s the description:
“In this activity, students explore connections between the graphs and equations of parallel lines.”
It’s not awful. But it’s far from great. It really struggles with two principles of our building code in particular:
#4 – Create problematic activities. It’s not clear to students what they’re doing—or why they’re doing it—until the end of the activity (or maybe even at all).
#5 – Give students opportunities to be right and wrong in different, interesting ways. There’s really just one correct path through this thing. And I don’t believe there are interesting ways to be wrong here, either. Bottom line: expect a lot of similar, uninteresting student responses. I’m not sure that’s the best fodder for rich classroom discussion.
- Will you offer your own diagnosis? A second opinion of sorts? What do you think is wrong with this activity?
- Better yet, will you offer suggestions for your own treatment? How would you make this activity better?
- Better still, will you build and share a new, better activity that addresses the shortcomings identified in one of the diagnoses?
Drop a line (or two) in the comments, or let me know what you think on Twitter (@mjfenton).
I’ll be back Friday with a new treatment of my own.