Proportional thinking

During this week's math class, we discussed the curriculum-changing activities Dan Meyer has been doing in the classroom. This wasn't our first time discussing his importance. We have learned that he has been able to make math lessons more engaging and exciting for students of all ages. He has done so by allowing them to think outside the box.

While discussing his methods, our professor showed us a video of Dan Meyer teaching a lesson on proportional thinking with a video of someone building a pyramid of pennies.

As someone who has difficulty with math, I found the video of the pyramid being built quite headache-inducing. It was fast and gave the viewer little time to process how many pennies there were.

In order to make the lesson more engaging, Meyer allowed the class to ask multiple questions (and saved them for later) that they first thought after watching the video. There were questions such as, "How many pennies are there?" "How many are in a stack?" "How heavy is it?"

After noting these questions, Meyer gave the class time to try to solve the question. He allowed the class to give rough estimates. After these estimates, he zoomed in on the video to show how man were in a stack (13). After figuring this out, the class was to see how many rows there were. Once this was determined, it was easy to figure out how many pennies there were by using the formula that is used to calculate area.

I found this lesson to be quite inspiring. I think it's important for teachers to understand that the process is important when teaching a lesson and trying to solve a problem. There is too much importance placed on the answer itself and, because of this, students are struggling with trying to find methods to solve a word problem.

In the video, Meyer has taught us the importance of process, curiosity, and collaboration with your classmates.