The past two weeks, I have done six lesson studies on Robert Kaplinsky's In-N-Out lesson. As a matter of fact, I had the awesome privilege of seeing Robert do this lesson at the 2nd Annual San Diego CA STEM Symposium. As much as I love all that he has done for this lesson, there was something missing that really draws students into the lesson....The Act I video. So Manny Lopez and I made this:
Interesting, some of the questions I got from students include:
--What is a 3 by 3?
--What is a 100 x 100?
--Why is he using math terms?
--What does a 100 x 100 look like?
I learned that you cannot assume students know all the In-N-Out lingo just because they live in So Cal. Naturally, I showed the students these burgers:
--What is a 3 by 3?
--What is a 100 x 100?
--Why is he using math terms?
--What does a 100 x 100 look like?
I learned that you cannot assume students know all the In-N-Out lingo just because they live in So Cal. Naturally, I showed the students these burgers:
I asked them questions like, "What is the difference between the two burgers?" "How many buns does each burger have?" "How many sets of veggies does each burger have?" Then I busted this out:
The crowd goes wild. The purpose of this is to give students the context of our problem. I'm hoping students can see that this 20 x 20 still only has one bun and only one set of veggies. The question we are focusing on is "What is the price of a 100 x 100 burger?" and ultimately getting to "What is the price of a n x n burger?"
Now that students have a context of what we are dealing with, it's time for guesses. I ask for students to write down their best guess of the price for a 100 x 100. As I was recording the high and low in the class, one student said $8. What do you do with that? Do I record it and just move along or do I challenge the student a little? I just moved along but thinking more about it I suppose I would have asked the student to give me his best guess for a single cheese burger. Whatever price I would have received, I could have asked, ''Just so I'm clear, you are saying that a single cheese burger is x dollars and a 100 x 100 is going to be $8?" Not sure if this is the right thing in the first Act. I know that I am trying to build the low threshold in the first Act of the lesson so students can all participate. Will this shut students off?
Act II
Information needed. I have done a slight modification to what I have seen Dan Meyer and Robert Kaplinsky do and am really interested on feedback here. After students wrote down information needed, I gave the students one more task. The task was to discuss with a partner why you needed that information. Specifically, what were students planning on doing with that information. Here are two examples from the class:
Now that students have a context of what we are dealing with, it's time for guesses. I ask for students to write down their best guess of the price for a 100 x 100. As I was recording the high and low in the class, one student said $8. What do you do with that? Do I record it and just move along or do I challenge the student a little? I just moved along but thinking more about it I suppose I would have asked the student to give me his best guess for a single cheese burger. Whatever price I would have received, I could have asked, ''Just so I'm clear, you are saying that a single cheese burger is x dollars and a 100 x 100 is going to be $8?" Not sure if this is the right thing in the first Act. I know that I am trying to build the low threshold in the first Act of the lesson so students can all participate. Will this shut students off?
Act II
Information needed. I have done a slight modification to what I have seen Dan Meyer and Robert Kaplinsky do and am really interested on feedback here. After students wrote down information needed, I gave the students one more task. The task was to discuss with a partner why you needed that information. Specifically, what were students planning on doing with that information. Here are two examples from the class:
I hoped that giving the students time to discuss this with their peers lowered the affective filter. What are your thoughts? Good or bad move?
So, this is what they got:
So, this is what they got:
Before diving in and letting the students get to work, it was suggested in the debrief that I allow the students to first write down an estimate. I like the idea but I'm trying to distinguish the "estimate" from the "work" students would do immediately following the information given to them. What do you think?
The two common errors that flooded the room was multiplying the price of a cheeseburger by 100 and multiplying the price of a double-double by 50. After some time I allow students to present their work on the whiteboard. So one of my scaffolding questions was, "If you multiply the price of a cheeseburger by 100, what will you get in return?" The light bulb goes on "hopefully" with this visual aid:
The two common errors that flooded the room was multiplying the price of a cheeseburger by 100 and multiplying the price of a double-double by 50. After some time I allow students to present their work on the whiteboard. So one of my scaffolding questions was, "If you multiply the price of a cheeseburger by 100, what will you get in return?" The light bulb goes on "hopefully" with this visual aid:
When I asked the students, "Are 100 cheeseburgers the same as a 100 x 100?" This lent itself to another quick partner discussion. This image was helpful as well:
By this time students are really wanting to know what this thing looks like. Did my buddy Manny really get it and eat it? How much did it really cost? One of my favorite parts of a 3 Act lesson is to hear students cheer and make a commotion over the answer. So I first show them this:
...and while the crowd is still making all kinds of noises, this appears:
You may be thinking, "Wait a minute, this receipts is bogus!" You are right. The original order was taken on Halloween in 2004. I did this lesson on September 2014 which is reflected in the menu. I'll need to brush up on my Photo Shop skills to make this look more legit. Nevertheless, having done this in 6 different classrooms, not one student suspected anything.