Today is Wednesday. My classes are only 40 minutes instead of the usual 55 minutes. So on short days like this, I assign math tasks. I decided it was the perfect time to start a 3 act math task. I chose Dandy Candies. It was fun.The first time I showed the short 1 min clip, I had the students just watch it. I asked a couple questions and I replayed the video so students could find the answers to my questions. The final time I showed the video, I stopped it so my students could record the information for each arrangement.
I actually had all the students paying attention to the video and sharing the answers with each other. There was even some discussion on the number of units used to create the rectangular prisms. I asked the students to find the two arrangements that had not been shown as a choice. This took most of the rest of the class period.
The class went extremely fast with no behavior issues or students trying to sleep. Just before the ending of class, they wrote down the question. When we revisit this activity to finish it, I am going to review calculating surface area so they can answer the questions in Act two. Due to the way my students learn, I had to explore a couple of the questions earlier during the video so they would have something to focus on.
I look forward to finishing this up next week. I"ll give you an update then.
