Checkerboard Problem Re-Cap

The first day is over and the lesson was a success!  The "less is more" philosophy really paid off today. 

We did not take this problem to completion in one lesson.  I allowed plenty of time to wrestle with the idea, intersperse questions to assist in next steps, and left them dangling....I encouraged them to think more about the problem and to discuss it with their family but asked them not to Google this problem just to get an answer.

It was challenging for this teacher to not give away the answer and the procedure just to finish up the problem for the students! Letting them do the work means I need to ask thought-provoking questions and stay out of their way!

I asked students to complete an exit ticket and answer the following questions:

1. Something I liked about math class today...
2. Something I learned in math class today....
3. A question I have....

There was a pattern to their responses that was so gratifying and encouraging to me. Here are common responses to today's experience:

Students overwhelming said they liked the problem and found it fun, exciting, hard, and challenging. They liked working in groups and being able to talk the problem out with their friends and meet new students as well.

Here are some favorite quotes: " I liked that we really used our brain",  "we had to think", "it got me thinking real hard", "I had to really think, not guess", and "Our first problem was difficult and difficult problems help me learn."  WOW!  I did not prompt any of this thinking in them. They knew it all along no matter what their "level" of ability or achievement was.

In response to the second question, students commented frequently that they learned something about counting squares on the checkerboard, but they also remarked that they learned that you should "look closely for patterns," "you write down what you think", and "math can trick your brain."

Overwhelmingly, the students' question was all about finding the actual number of squares on the board (I've got them hooked for tomorrow!) and finding out if they were going to do more problems like this one.  My favorite comment: "How come math has so many cool things?"

I'd say I did my job today - get kids curious about math problem-solving, help them persevere, and make them beg for more! Need I say more - I'm eager for Day 2. The plan is to talk about the strategy of keeping an organized list, using a smaller case to help solve this bigger problem, looking at the emerging pattern of square numbers/square roots, and then predict how many squares on a 10 x 10 grid.