"That was the best Math lesson ever." Phillip C.

At the risk of sounding hokey, I need to share a bit about today's Math lesson.  But first, I need to back up a bit.  In the middle of the day, we took the Acuity Mathematics assessment.  Most of my kids finished the hour-long test in about 20 minutes.  My discouragement was somewhat tempered by the fact that some of them took time to review their original answers.  Then, I looked at their scores.  Discouragement came rushing back.

We left the computer lab and returned to the classroom.  I wanted to deride them for not using the test-taking strategies I had laboriously presented.  I wanted to berate them for the poor scores I was noting from the Acuity report as they relaxed with a library book.  Unable to choose a course of action, I sent them out to recess.

While they were outside, I glanced through my earlier post, Rediscovering the Beauty of a Triangle in a Square.  I wondered what purpose a rant on my students would effectively serve.  I wondered if I could rediscover the beauty of numbers and their patterns I enjoyed when I was a fourth grader.

My students returned from their recess.  They sensed that I was either upset or otherwise distracted.  I stood for several long minutes.  The silence intensified everyone's expectations.  I finally handed a marker to a student and instructed him to write "72" on the board.  I stared at it.  The room fell silent once more.  I called on another student to apply a number bond.  He properly added an eight and a nine.
We added more.  Some came up with the idea of using a multiplication table to help.  Still others decided that just because they couldn't fine part of a number bond on the table, it didn't mean their ideas were incorrect.

While questioning the reasoning of their choices, we found ourselves in an animated discussion of even and odd numbers.  They began writing rules for working with them after they discovered even numbers plus even numbers equaled even numbered answers.  They followed that by realizing with a bit of amazement that odd numbers plus odd numbers equaled even numbers, too.  Imagine their astonishment when they proved to themselves that odd numbers plus even numbers would result in odd numbered answers.  Each student scribbled furiously to prove ideas and present them to classmates.

I "suggested" the relationship between addition and multiplication.  More brain synapses began to fire as a few began to realize their theories about odd and even numbers might apply there as well.  It was nearly time for busses to be called when I said that I would love to see an encore performance tomorrow.  A student asked what "encore" was and one of my ESL girls began to clap as I tried to answer.  More kids started clapping.  They stood.  They cheered.  They wanted to know if we could do Math first tomorrow.

I sent them home still laughing and applauding.  One of them turned and came back to me.  It was the boy who wrote "72" on the board an hour earlier.  He hugged me and looked up and into my eyes.  He said, " Mr. Glass, I never liked Math until today.  That was the best Math lesson ever.  Thanks."

I'm still trying to sort out what happened.  For that one precious hour, my students and I were completely in synch with each other.  I did very little talking.  When I did, it was to pose scenarios, to speculate about possibilities.  I hope I can recapture the experience, push the buttons that get them thinking and wondering.  I hope for an encore.