Dan Meyer
@ddmeyer
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/
dan@mrmeyer.com
http://camt11.mrmeyer.com/
First off I just want to say that I got to see his original speech during lunch and it was AWESOME!!!! I want to be him when I grow up! LOL! :)
There are 3 Acts to a Movie/Play, you should have 3 Acts to your Lessons too...
The Three Acts Of A Mathematical Story
Act One - Introduce the central conflict of your story/task clearly, visually, viscerally, using as few words as possible.
Leave no one out of your first act. Your first act should impose as few demands on the students as possible — either of language or of math. It should ask for little and offer a lot. This, incidentally, is as far as the #anyqs challenge takes us.
Act Two - The protagonist/student overcomes obstacles, looks for resources, and develops new tools.
So it is with your second act. What resources will your students need before they can resolve their conflict? What tools do they have already? What tools can you help them develop?
Act Three - Resolve the conflict and set up a sequel/extension.
The third act pays off on the hard work of act two and the motivation of act one.
If we've successfully motivated our students in the first act, the payoff in the third act needs to meet their expectations.
Conclusion - Many math teachers take act two as their job description. Hit the board, offer students three worked examples and twenty practice problems. As the ALEKS algorithm gets better and Bill Gates throws more gold bricks at Sal Khan and more people flip their classrooms, though, it's clear to me that the second act isn't our job anymore. Not the biggest part of it, anyway. You are only one of many people your students can access as they look for resources and tools. Going forward, the value you bring to your math classroom increasingly will be tied up in the first and third acts of mathematical storytelling, your ability to motivate the second act and then pay off on that hard work.
He explains in a little more depth:
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=10285
Take a Photo or one minute video & show it to your class & get them interested!!! They will want to know what the end of the story is, or what it is all about!
Try it out on your PLN first...Post to Twitter with #anyqs - tag = This means people will ask you questions, it's the same thing for the classroom. You want the students asking the questions. Lead them, don't tell them. Let them DISCOVER!!!
Example:
October 6th, 2010 by
Dan Meyer Click the image for full size. You have to see it full size.
1. What questions perplex you about this photo?
What's the perplexity score here?
davidwees: How many people there?
Peter: how many people are there?
Roz: How many people?
schwartz: is it bad that i want to know the area of the shaded regoin?
JG: How many rows can be added until the circle touches the pentagon?
Colin (@ColinTGraham): How was it built and measured out?
Sam Critchlow: what/why is the gap between the pentagon and the circle
JG: How much area is added on with each additional concentric circle?
Sam Critchlow: or what is the total open space area
Chris: how many more people to complete the circle?
Colin (@ColinTGraham): what's the significance of the pentagon
Nick Hussain: how many more people/dwellings (?) could be added if the circle was completed?
JSR: what's at the center?
Colin (@ColinTGraham): how many sectors if the circle was complete
We went with:
davidwees: How many people are there?
2. What is your guess? What is a number you know is too high / too low?
3. What information would you need to answer the question?
JG: Average number of people in each rectangular region
schwartz: people per square something
davidwees: I think we can estimate people per square
schwartz: radius of part circle?
Barb: Was admission charged? If so, who sold the tickets? They could give a ballpark figure
Colin (@ColinTGraham): is each sector evenly divided and how many sit in each of the eleven concentric rings?
davidwees: and get the scale from the size of the tracks shown
Roz: we definitely need scale
David's response is right on point:
davidwees: so I think we could get a pretty good estimate without much more information
You don't need anything more here. (I wonder what it takes to get students comfortable with imaginary units, as in "the radius of the circle is 500 burningmans," etc.)
Nevertheless, here are two images that are interesting, if not useful also:
4. Submit your work.
I knew we wouldn't have time for this. Here's
the Evernote page, though, where
Colin Graham posted his work:
5. Show the answer.
[
BTW: Though the photo is clearly timestamped 2009, various commenters have outed themselves as serious Burning Man attendees to tell me that this is 2010's photo. I have adjusted the news clipping accordingly.]
More examples:
http://camt11.mrmeyer.com/2011/06/11/three-act-math/
This guy is AWESOME!!! Definitely following him now! :) You should too! :)
