5

Focused Instruction on Quick Images

A Guided Math Group

Introduction

This video shows Michael Flynn working with a small group of second-grade stu-
dents on an activity called Quick Images from the Investigations in Number, Data,
and Space curriculum (Russell et al. 2008g). He decided to pull this group of stu-
dents together because he thought they needed more work with this activity.
While he worked with this group of students, the rest of the class did individual
work.
In the Quick Image activity, students are briefly shown an image of an
arrangement of dots (see Figure 5–1). Once they have been shown the image, stu-
dents draw what they remember of the image and then share what the total quan-
tity is and how they remembered the image. Because the goal of the activity is to
help students develop their skills of visualizing a quantity and using the way a
quantity is organized or grouped to figure out the total quantity, they are only
shown the image briefly and then are asked to wait until after the image is no
longer visible to draw what they remember.
In the specific Quick Image activity seen in the video, the teacher shows stu-
dents images of dots organized in ten frames, a tool used to emphasize quantities
in relationship to the numbers 10 and 5. Figure 5–2 includes two of the images
that students can be seen working on in the video.
Before watching the video, think about how second graders might figure out
how many dots are in each of these images. What might they do beyond count-
ing all the dots? How might they use the structure of the ten frame to help them?
As you watch the video, consider the following questions. You might want to
take notes on what you notice.

• How does the teacher try to make the mathematics of the lesson explicit?


• How does he structure this activity?


• What decisions and moves does the teacher make?


• What questions does he ask?


• What statements does he make?