Private Universe Video 4 Commentary

I enjoyed watching this video for several reasons. The first part of the video focused on the Tower of Hanoi project we learned about a few weeks ago. The video reiterated an important problem solving method (finding a pattern in a smaller problem) and then using this knowledge to solve the original question in hand. The second part of the video was teaching mathematics to high school students who had a teacher leave because of behavioral problems. The new classroom teacher taught in a way to make students learn together as a class. The students were working on a 'line of best fit' in a scatter plot. Several students went to the white board and provided detailed explanations as to why they came to their respective conclusion. Other students then commented and together the class came to an answer. The teacher took a different approach to learning in allowing the students to learn together, rather than just standing in front of a projector and performing problems on a transparency. I do think she did a wonderful job and would love to see more of this in classrooms because students have a tendency to simply lay back in class while the teacher does the work. Learning sometimes gets sacrificed. The only problem I have heard with the method employed in Part 2 of this video is students who do not like being called upon to answer for fear of being wrong in front of others.