As an envoy, I thought that it would be fun to give you an authentic look into my planning of a Citizen Math lesson. The first Citizen Math lesson that my students are tackling is See You Ladder. When choosing the first lesson of the year, I wanted a lesson that involved simplifying radicals as well as solving a real world problem using equations. This lesson involves both because one way that students can tackle the problem is using the Pythagorean Theorem. My Honors Algebra students are mainly 8th graders and the Pythagorean Theorem is a math8 standard that they will be tested on, but we don't cover in algebra. The lesson provided an authentic chance for students to realize that the Pythagorean Theorem was needed (or at least I had hoped they would). *Note: After doing the lesson I love that the kids naturally figured it out, without me prompting. I loved hearing them say, "so we are basically needing to combine topics from Unit1 and Unit2." Others said, "oh we need that one formula with "a, b, and c". And of course some groups remembered the name.* This is a lesson that I have never done, so I thought that sharing my planning as well as my reflection of the reality when implementing a Citizen Math lesson for the first time could be helpful.

The first steps that I do every time I pick a new lesson to try are the same. I print the student form and complete it. Then I print the teacher form and compare how I tackled the problems to the way that they suggested. I always have a lightbulb moment and get reminded of a different way that I could have approached the problem. I make notes on my sheet about different ways that my students might also tackle the problem.

Next I go to the teach mode and look through the video clips, hooks, and graphs to see what is included. I then normally make a Power Point to go along with the lesson. This is definitely not something that is required, but something that works in my room.

I decided to make this video last night as I was putting on the final touches to the Power Point. (Which in full disclosure I tweaked after the first period of doing today's lesson.)

I have been doing Citizen Math lessons for years. Many of the lessons, I have done year after year and I know what mistakes kids will make, when, and how. I also have the timing down. This lesson was a new lesson that I have not done before. So a moment of truth, I thought that I had the timing down and knew where they would and would not mess up. And like most things in life I quickly realized that I was wrong. As all teachers do, I made adjustments on the fly and the students had no idea that today was not going as I had planned. Thankfully, I had budgeted for two days. My worry was that they might not need day two or that I wouldn't have enough to fill day two. I am saying all of this to let you know that even veteran teachers of Citizen Math lessons get thrown curve balls. Did my students still have great discussions? Did my students still have "brain aches" from how hard they were thinking? Did my students still walk out of the room saying today was "cool"? The answer to all of these questions was yes. And it didn't go close to how I had envisioned it. However, thanks to my planning I was ready to make adjustments period by period.

So what went "differently"?

• This was the first Citizen Math lesson of the year and I always forget how slowly they transition and get going on the first lesson. The students are expecting a "pattern" to follow and the answers to work out nicely. They are thrown for a loop when they find out the answers might not be "pretty" and that there are lots of ways to tackle the problem.
• Students were getting stuck on Questions 1 and 2. I had not expected that from Honors Algebra students. However, their mistakes were areas for great discussions from group to group while they worked. The discussion got even better when we would come back to whole group and share out how we tackled the problem. This is a big reason at why I only give them one question at a time. This is also where I had to make big adjustments because it quickly became obvious that the time I had budgeted wasn't enough in most periods. However, in one period the timing was perfect and they got further than the other periods.
• Mistakes that students were making:
• Question1: At first groups were stopping as soon as they figured out how far away from the building the ladder should be. They are so used to a problem taking one step. We had to remind them to re-read the question and make sure that they were answering the question being asked. Most of them then realized that they shouldn't be done and that they were going to need the Pythagorean Theorem.
• Question2: Some groups started off trying to guess and test and quickly realized that this method wasn't the most time efficient method. Other groups were placing the 40 ft on the building like they had on question 1 and thought that the ladder was just 10 ft out but then they were getting answers bigger than 40 ft. Some groups decided to use variables to tackle the problem. However when they went to plug in 4x they were getting 4x squared instead of 16x squared and again were getting answers that didn't make sense.
• But all of these discussion led students to great observations and learning moments. In whole group discussion we shared out how we tackled the problem, where we got stuck, and groups saw similarities and differences.

The second day of the lesson my students tackled an authentic dilemma that our Fishers Fire Department had written for us. Our downtown is going through lots of development and a new hotel will be opening up downtown next year. They asked for us to determine the best place to park the fire truck. The fire chief and their education outreach looked over each period's plan and wrote up the following reflection for the students. They will then be visiting the school later to let the students see the ladder truck and ask the fire fighters any questions that arouse while tackling the problem. Below is the response we got back.

Here are notes that we made when looking at the student work:

Periods 4 & 6: It looks like they found the distance by using the 4:1 rule and calculated 50 ft/4 = 12.5 ft, but then used that distance from the corner of the building instead of the location of the fire.

Periods 3 & 5: We think that they calculated 12.5 ft straight out in front of the building and then connected a line over to the street and that is how they calculated their distance from the corner of the building. These two teams arrived at a similar distance as Captain Rielage, but for different reasons.

Many people don't realize that there is a lot of math involved in firefighting (as well as other emergencies), such as water pressure, calculating friction as the water moves through the hose, and ladder placement. We are excited that the students were able to get a taste of being a firefighter for a couple of days.