Module 4 Activity 4b: Practice a Connecting Representations Activity

Conducting a Connecting Representations Routine

Plan your own Connecting Representations activity and lead them in your PLC, with your PLC members acting as the students. Having a chance to practice a connecting representations activity is one of the most important elements of learning to incorporate this routine into your teaching. Don’t just talk about what you would do - actually try it out! Try to stay in your given role as you practice this routine with members of your PLC. The teachers who stay in these roles during practice time tend to be the ones who implement routines most successfully in their own classroom.

Plan a connecting representations activity

With a partner, plan a connecting representations activity with a focus on anticipating student thinking and selecting student work for the whole group discussion at the end of the routine. (10-25 minutes)
- With your partner, select a connecting representations activity from the practice set to rehearse with your PLC. Each pair should choose a different activity.
- Predict the different strategies that students might use to make connections between the two representation sets. Consider student approaches that make clear connections between the structure of the expression and the pictures, as well as approaches that reveal that students are not making these connections. Discussing why a connection is not working can often help students as much or more than discussion connections that do work.
- Practice recording these connections as you imagine your students will record them.
- Choose one or two connections between an expression and a picture that you will choose as the basis for the whole group discussion. Plan how you will conduct the whole group discussion about a given connection.

Handout Links to an external site.

Practice a connecting representations activity

Reading about connecting representations activities is not enough! We found that simply reading about and discussing routines is not enough to learn to do them in your classroom. Teachers learn the most when they have the opportunity to practice instructional routines with others.

Each pair should take turns conducting their connecting representations activity. The other members of the PLC will act as students. Plan on 15-25 minutes per team conducting their activity.

When you are leading the connecting representations activity, follow the routine found at this link Links to an external site..When you are role playing a student during a connecting representations activity:

Use your experience with students to approximate how they would respond. The goal is to work on capturing student thinking about the connections between representations, so don’t focus on student behavior issues.
Stay “in character” for the whole connecting representations activity.

Reflect on the connecting representations routine

Reflect on the experience of leading the connecting representations activity with your PLC
- What went well? What surprised you?
- What did you learn about the ways students might make connections between representations?
Reflect specifically on choosing student work as the basis for the whole group discussion during the second step of this activity.

What did the teacher do well?
What choices did the teacher make, and how did those choices influence student understanding?
What might you do differently in terms of the whole group discussion if you were doing this connecting representations activity with your students

An important aspect of connecting representations activities is that students have a chance to apply what they are learning about connecting representations in order to create the missing representation in the final step. Reflect on the choice of which representation was left "unmatched" in each of the example activities you did. What representation might you leave unmatched if you were doing this activity in your classroom? Why?