Jo Boaler’s YouCubed.org site features two interesting classroom videos (an eight minute video and a four minute shorter version) showing students in her “Computational and Mathematical Engineering Class: How to Learn Mathematics” sharing their ideas about the Pennies and Paperclips game which is featured in our Discovering the Art of Mathematics: Patterns book. This video clip, which was part of her invited address at this year’s Joint Mathematics Meeting in San Diego, shows her students sharing out their conjectures on how the placement of the pennies helps determine which player wins the game. In addition to being very excited about her using our materials, it was very interesting listening to the students share their ideas and collaborate with the other students to refine them. We were excited to learn about a student's interesting representation that would beautifully connect to a proof idea using Hamiltonian circuits. Wonderful!
We were also inspired by the inclusive and inviting language Jo uses to invite participation by the students:
It would be great to hear some different thinking that was going on, maybe you want to share a conjecture, maybe you want to share some thinking, maybe you want to share a bit of where you’re going towards a proof. And we’re going to hear from every pair so anybody who would like to start.
Take a look!!