Four Days and Counting

"Hey, any chance I could borrow 8 of your whiteboards on Monday? I have an idea for another disastrous lesson," I texted my friend, who teaches math next door to me.

"Big or small?" came her immediate reply. 

"Big."

"Yep."

"Awesome! Thanks!!"

"Always supportive of a disastrous lesson!"

I laughed. I was really hoping that it wouldn't actually be a disaster, but I could see where it could go horribly wrong. My idea was to attach a different picture to each whiteboard and have teams of four record their observations. These teams would rotate through the room until they had had a chance to record observations for all eight pictures. When they returned to their original board, they were to work together to infer what was really going on in the picture based on the evidence.

It was mostly the "rotating through the room" part that had disaster written all over it. I was pretty sure my second period class could handle it. Probably my sixth period class as well. Fourth and eighth? Not so much.

But I am never one to back down from a challenge, so today I went in and boldly followed my lesson plan. And it was. . .

Pretty okay. As predicted, second and sixth periods did the best. Fourth and eighth were also successful for the most part, although there were a few groups who still need to work on distinguishing between observations and inferences. I kept things moving by allowing them only two minutes to observe each picture, which I think helped eliminate some of the issues that can erupt when students are allowed out of their seats. There was still some shooing of students who had strayed from their teams, but on the whole it went better than expected. 

All I need to do now is find a way to get through these next four days before Spring Break!