Doering 1

Jennifer Doering
Rosemarie Michaels
Active Inquiry Pt. 1
29 September 2015
The Pattern of Learning
Last week, our class observed a second grade math lesson on growing patterns. The
second graders centered their bodies and minds before beginning the lesson, then reviewed what
a growing pattern was (a pattern that adds something each time such as ababbabbbabbbb etc.)
through a class discussion. Then the students were shown a growing pattern on the classroom
SmartBoard and asked to predict the next steps of the pattern several times. They were told to
draw the pattern on their whiteboards and talk with a partner after the pattern was revealed to
discuss if their prediction was correct. After the full pattern was revealed (5 steps), the students
participated in a class discussion about the pattern. Then, they were told to get into their daily
learning partners and complete a worksheet by building a pattern with unifex cubes and drawing
them on their worksheet. During the lesson, the teacher used many strategies to help her students
learn. These exemplified Teacher Performance Expectations (TPEs) 1, Specific Pedagogical
Skills for Mathematics Instruction and 4, Making Content Accessible.
During the lesson, the teacher used several strategies specifically for teaching math (TPE
1). Two of these strategies were especially useful. The first occurred during the review of
growing patterns: the teacher would call on a student and ask them to give an example from the
classroom of a growing pattern. The teacher would then call on a different student to explain why
they thought the original student gave that answer and their thinking behind it. This gently

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reminded students to really listen to each other, and also gave multiple students the opportunity
to answer questions. This type of questioning also gave students the opportunity to think outside
of the box. The didnt have to know exactly what their classmate was thinking to answer the
question and could actually give their classmates new ideas and ways of thinking through this
questioning style if their answer was different from the original students. It allowed more
students voices and ideas to be heard and gave opportunities for new ways of thinking. The
teacher also built upon previous learning to aid her students. She used materials they had worked
with before (unifex cubes) and showed visuals using these material before allowing students to
work with the actual manipulatives. This gave students the ability to focus on their new learning
and activity, rather than how to use a particular tool/manipulative. In addition, using a visual of
the tool before asking students to use it themselves gave them a quick review of how to use it
and a smoother learning process. This was a successful strategy as all students knew how to
build the structures with the unifex cubes and stayed on task during the activity.
The teacher made the content accessible to her students (TPE 4) in a variety of ways.
Those ways included using classroom decorations to show examples of the material and
differentiating the questions to give all students a challenging activity. During the review portion
of the lesson, the teacher asked the students to point out growing patterns in their classroom.
Some of these examples were the classroom calendar and daily schedule. The students were
already familiar with these objects because they had been present in the classroom for a while.
They were a familiar concept that was given new meaning with the new math lesson. Students
were able to grasp the new content because it was being presented in a familiar context. The
teacher also gave students multiple ways of completing the worksheet with their partner. She

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gave them the option of building the structures and then drawing them on their paper, or going
straight to the drawing step if they wanted to. This gave students the flexibility to work at their
own pace, whether that be slow and concrete or fast and more abstract.
The students learned about growing patterns during this lesson, as was demonstrated by
their ability to talk about how to create new ones that followed the same pattern as well as their
drawn answers on their worksheets. But more importantly, in my opinion, students were
beginning to learn how to work collaboratively in partnerships. The teacher assigned them to
partners that they wouldnt normally talk to in order to keep them on task. This led to some pairs
simply working side by side instead of collaboratively. Halfway through partner time, the teacher
asked her students to hold up a finger for each characteristic of good partner work they were
performing at that time. This was a strategy she used often to lead her students in the right
direction without outright telling them, This is what you are supposed to be doing. After the
gentle reminder of what collaborative work looks like, the students listened to each other and
gave each other different jobs. I heard one pair saying, Ill build this one, and you draw it. Well
switch next time. This style of promoting collaboration as well as the other strategies the
teacher used to make the content easily accessible to her students are strategies I hope to include
in my classroom. I will especially try to encourage outside of the box thinking in my students,
lead them to new materials through the use of familiar ones, and differentiate instruction so all
students have the opportunity to work at their own pace.