I was asked by my colleague, Grace Twietmeyer, to guest lecture for her online Geometry class. I immediately said yes because I never say no to more Geometry! Grace's parameters for what I would teach were wide open. She said it didn't have to be a whole lesson, it could be GeoGebra, it could be short, it could be about any 2nd semester Geometry topic, etc. When I started to think about doing this lesson, I was stumped was because I didn't know how to engage online students. I couldn't have a dialog with them and I couldn't see their faces for reactions to the lesson. Engagement goes far beyond a teacher posing a question and a student answering. I was so lost for an idea that I almost backed out of my commitment. That's when I found Which One Doesn't Belong and I knew it was a perfect way to engage students online.
I made a short (2:40 min.) video. My hook was an introduction from Sesame Street with the song "Which one of these is not like the other." Then I gave an example that I got from a blog post by Jennifer Wilson. I wanted to give a quick example of how you could actually start coming up with reasons for why each one doesn't belong.
Students did a pretty good job of coming up with a reason for why each box could not belong. One misconception that students had
with this question was that a few of them picked one box that didn't belong, instead of giving a reason for each box. Their explanation for the one box was good. They were able to defend their answer which was cool. Another misconception was that one student actually solved for x in each box so he didn't really understand the idea of comparing and contrasting the boxes. I think it would be cool for this class to get to do WODB again to improve upon their comparisons of all of the boxes.
I thought they did a great job with the incomplete set. They all gave different answers. One of my favorite things about WODB
is that the questions are open-ended, providing an opportunity for different correct answers. I think this is particularly good for an online class when students are posting answers to a discussion board. They can see each other's answers if they need a little guidance, but they are still challenged to come up with something different.
I made a short (2:40 min.) video. My hook was an introduction from Sesame Street with the song "Which one of these is not like the other." Then I gave an example that I got from a blog post by Jennifer Wilson. I wanted to give a quick example of how you could actually start coming up with reasons for why each one doesn't belong.
I posed two questions to students. One was a right triangle example where each student had to write a discussion post giving a reason for why each box could be left out of the set. The second challenge I posed was an incomplete set. This was an idea I found from Mary Bourassa. I wanted students to draw a picture that could both be the shape that doesn't belong and also completes each other set.
Students did a pretty good job of coming up with a reason for why each box could not belong. One misconception that students had
with this question was that a few of them picked one box that didn't belong, instead of giving a reason for each box. Their explanation for the one box was good. They were able to defend their answer which was cool. Another misconception was that one student actually solved for x in each box so he didn't really understand the idea of comparing and contrasting the boxes. I think it would be cool for this class to get to do WODB again to improve upon their comparisons of all of the boxes.
I thought they did a great job with the incomplete set. They all gave different answers. One of my favorite things about WODB
is that the questions are open-ended, providing an opportunity for different correct answers. I think this is particularly good for an online class when students are posting answers to a discussion board. They can see each other's answers if they need a little guidance, but they are still challenged to come up with something different.
After one day of this lesson being posted, Grace and I got some great feedback. A parent posted on Twitter that her daughter had a great experience with the WODB lesson. And the director of digital learning was engaged too.
I felt like the students were engaged with this lesson. They put some thought into the activity and had creative answers for the incomplete sets. Here's what they came up with for the 4th box:
I think a future challenge for this class, or another online class could be to come up with their own WODB then have each other give reasons why each box doesn't belong in a discussion post.
I made this video on my home computer with slow internet, so it's not perfect and kind of glitchy. Since I got great feedback on Twitter and from students, I thought I'd go ahead and share. Feel free to take it, use it and make it better!
How to do it
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