Today, M.C. politely asked me to get out of the way, walked up to the document camera, put her work under it and said, "I need your help, guys. Really. I want your feedback. I don't know how to do this."
The class responded. No one ridiculed her. She asked them questions. They asked her questions.
All I could do was sit down and watch.
Today, I caught a glimpse of what school should be.
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7 comments:
Please tell us more! What problem was she working on? What help did she want? (I don't even know how a document camera works.)
Long Distance high five coming your way. That is awesome.
One word - AWESOME!
Fantastic! I Had a similar moment today when my students were working on an exploration problem. After some time had passed I asked if they were frustrated/wanted to come back together/wanted a hint and got a resounding no.
Wow, what an environment for learning you have! Imagine what would happen if all students felt that comfortable seeking help in math!
I'm with Sue. What probem was she doing?
Sue
We were doing a "show me everything you know" type problem on a basic quadratic function. It could be factored and had an even 'b' value, so completing the square was practical. Kids were finding line of symmetry, vertex, x-intercepts (by factoring, comp the square and quadratic formula), y-intercepts.
She wanted help with all of the above. She can plug and chug with the best of them but wasn't understanding what we were doing and had trouble figuring out what to do and when since the prompt didn't give any context clues.
The document camera simply allows me to project the live image of whatever its aimed at onto the board. Great for kids presenting their work.
So it wasn't a problem we'd expect kids to get excited about. It was just that she wanted to 'get it'. That's fabulous!
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