What will my teaching look like with Discovering Algebra? How is a class period structured?
Discovering Algebra is based on a pedagogy of discovery, hands-on learning, and rich use of technology. Students will have access to graphing calculators almost every day, and many times they’ll sit in groups. In a typical day, you may start with a warm-up, or by going over the homework. Then you’ll spend 15–30 minutes doing an Investigation, in which students will work together to discover some aspect of the mathematics of the lesson. Sometimes an Investigation will involve students getting out of their seats and performing an experiment to gather data, then they might study properties of the data and develop a model for it. In other Investigations, students graph different equations or perform a variety of calculations using their graphing calculators, then look for patterns and make conjectures about mathematical properties. After an Investigation, students may present their results, you might conduct a class discussion to elicit what students learned, or you may summarize the mathe
