A real first grade Math Lesson at Brooke East Boston

This post provides a link to a real live first grade math lesson at Brooke East Boston.   I guarantee if you take time to watch the lesson, you will not only learn something, but it will stimulate some deep thinking about how we can reform and improve our own schools. 

I’ve been focusing on teaching at Brooke East Boston, a K-Middle school in that city.  Students are selected by state conducted lottery.   The school has state leading math test results, and very high literacy test scores.  I’m suggesting that people who advocate school reform need to focus more on what goes on in classrooms.   When you see an example of a highly successful highly functional system, if you like what you see, it forces you to think about “how can we do that in other schools and classrooms.”

This morning, we had a family get-together across three generations.   Five of us, all of whom have varying amounts of teaching experience, in varying grades and settings, watched this video lesson for about 20 minutes. The links to the lesson are found below.   That triggered another one-hour plus of conversation: “how do they do that?”  I assert that you cannot watch this video without thinking about school reform, school organization, and teaching.

This blog contains links to the lesson we watched.  It’s a first-grade math lesson.  The students in this school are predominantly free and reduced lunch eligible.  The lesson is on number patterns.   I virtually guarantee you that if you watch this lesson, it will stimulate you to think.   Notice that the students already know the structure of the classroom protocol.   What else do you see that you like.  What do you see that you question?   These are first graders:   are they demonstrating traditional Minnesota first grade skills?

Here is the link to the video of the lesson.  

Here is the link to the lesson plan.
The lesson begins with the first graders completing a worksheet.  Here is the worksheet.
At the end of the lesson, students complete an exit ticket, here it is.

If we want to reform education, we need to be more intentional about what we do in schools.  We can talk about the color of the teacher.  We can talk about seniority, tenure, integration, choice, and all the rest.  But we have to think more intentionally about how do we make the classroom work.

We’ll write more about this in the next post.