Car Caravan: How many minutes will it take to create this?

After watching a video of the students’ discussion from Day 1, we decided to use our target student’s one mathematical wondering below and present it as the challenge of the day.

The challenge: How many minutes will it take to create this?

We presented this challenge at the end of community time and invited those interested to work together to solve it. I brought the students to the drama area since it had the most room. We cleared out the furniture and sat down to get to work. Here is a documentation of our conversation below.

Teacher: What do we need to create this?

Student 1 : Marbles

Student 2: Little pieces of red/orange

Teacher: Of what exactly?
Student 2: Paint

Student 1: Wood

Teacher: We need to use what we have in class so have a look around or if you’d like we can look in our storage room as well.

Students were very excited.

Student 2 ran to get a picture of pattern blocks made into the alphabet.

Teacher: Oh wow that`s interesting.

Student 1: It`s too big

Student 3 went to get more pictures of the pattern blocks and talked about making a rocket.

Teacher: Do we need the pictures of the blocks or the blocks?

I noted they were getting side-tracked

Teacher: How do we know the pattern blocks are good materials?

Student 1: No, we don’t have pink.

Student 2 grabbed the chips of red and yellow.

Student 1: It`s not the same colour.

Student 3: Grabbed a puzzle.

I noted they were very unfocused and needed guidance to choose a material and move forward.

Student 1: It`s too big (shouting).

Student 3: Same size

Student 2 got the pencil crayons.

Student 3: Yes!

Student 1: No, it`s too big.

Teacher: Let`s compare!

Student 2 got more pencils and started to build.

Student 3: Let`s get started.

Teacher: Prompted to clean up what wasn't being used and help gather more pencils.

Student 1: Pencils are not good because we don’t have a lot of yellow.

Teacher: Where else can we get pencils?

Prompted them to make a list of what they needed using the colour words in class to copy the name in French. They only listed yellow and we went to ask two other classroom teachers to borrow their yellow pencil crayons. I encouraged them to count how many they took and write it down so we could make sure to return the right amount. During this time one student lost interest but two others joined to help start to create the image.

We took a snack break and then it was almost clean up time so I decided to take them in the hallway so we weren't distracted and I could take a video. I then took a video of them building it and gave my phone to one student to keep track of the minutes. In the end, I said all students needed to give a thumbs up to show they agreed it was complete. One student was not happy so I prompted him to explain why and for them to fix the issue before stopping the time. He claimed they needed purple.

In the end I encouraged one student to write down the number. I noticed he had trouble writing it down because of the colon and decimals. So I asked all four of them to try to copy down the number.

Next step: Present our video to the class and the next challenge will be to debate the answer to our challenge question after looking at their written results of the time it took to create the image.