I gathered all the kids together and explained the process. First they would work with a partner to solve problems with real environmental statistics. They needed to persevere!!! Of course they would have a "life line" - the other members of their tribe if they were STUCK. Once they finished their 1st three problems, it was time for the whole tribe to compare. If they all had the same answers, cool, put it on a Post-It Note and stick it up by the big problem. If their answers were different it was time to figure out if it was one answer or if both could work.
When I sent them off to work, it was true COMMUNITY. The kids were focused, helping each other and figuring out some problems with meaning. When the partners finished they looked over each others and posted their answers. Once all the problems were posted on the big problems it was time to see if the whole class could agree to the same answers or defend the different ones.
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| The class looked over the final results and had DEFENDED their results!! |
This is where the magic started to happen. There's no way I could have planned this out more perfectly. There were two of the six problems the class didn't agree on the answers. After just a minute or so, the first one was figured out. The next one was much more interesting. The problem involved the amount of garbage a person throws out in a day. The first part everyone in the class agreed was how much someone would throw out in a week. The next part out of 5 tribes there were 4 answers. I wanted to know how much would be thrown out in a month. 4 pounds per day and the answers were 102, 120, 112 and 124. As we discussed, each tribe proved their thinking and all answers made since except the 102 that was a calculation error. The kids learned that different answers can make sense and the are able to disagree in such an AWESOME way.
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