Objective

By the end of this lesson you will be able to identify features of authentic teaching in sample lessons

Introduction

Brainstorm: Take a few minutes and write down what you think authentic mathematics teaching looks like in your classroom. What are you, as the teacher doing? What are your students doing?

Activity

Part 1

Watch the following video. The video is of a man talking about traditional teaching vs authentic teaching. While you're watching the video think about how he transformed his classroom into authentic teaching. Try to come up with a lesson you teach in your class that you could make an authentic problem.

Authentic Problems-Dan Meyer

Part 2

Now that you have watched this video and can see how you could possibly transform a typical High School lesson, you are going to look at different activities that have been designed to be connected to the real world.

In the article "Authentic Activities Connecting Mathematics to the Real World" highlights 12 different activities you can do in a mathematics classroom.

Your Task:

Look at the activities: File:Authentic Activities for Connecting Mathematics to the real world.pdf

Select 3 lessons to analyze

Identify Similarities between the three lessons

Describe why you think they're authentic activities.

Identify why you think each of these lessons would be appealing to students

Reflection/Assessment

Based on what you have done this unit and the article you read during the first unit:

Write down 3 things that you feel are essential to an authentic lesson that are feasible in your classroom.
Write down/think about some things you are consciously going to do to ensure your lessons are authentic

During the final unit we are going to choose a familiar lesson that is not authentic and create an authentic lesson for your math classroom.

Additional Resources

File:Hands on with the Common Core Math Standards.pdf

Go to Unit 3 Unit 3: Incorporating authentic math into your own classroom