This went okay, though by the time the kids had logged in, and sorted Twitter out and so forth there wasn't that much time to actually get the interactions going properly. Keeping the class on-task was also tricky, but I'd hope that that would improve with time and practice (on my part as well as the class'). I also found it tricky to "sell" the value of the whole exercise to the kids. My most frequently asked question was "Is this for marks?"!
The second part of the lesson was an investigation of the sine rule, followed by a guided proof. The idea was that they would follow instructions to form a conjecture regarding the sine rule, and then prove their own conjecture (again, following instructions). Well, that went...okay...but you'll gather from my hesitation that it didn't go quite as I intended.
It was mainly slow. My instructions needed a certain amount of streamlining, but there were decent, especially since I was there to facilitate. But I underestimated how difficult it is to PROVE stuff when you're in grade 11. Even if you're very good at Maths.
To summarise:
- Advantages - Not a total disaster. I saw some potential for developing the ideas and activities. I think it started to develop some (non-curricular) skills which are important to acquire.
- Disadvantages - Time-consuming, and not necessarily always directly relevant to the (curricular) abilities that the kids need to acquire. Inefficient (but is real learning ever efficient?).
