Sharon's Third Grade Classroom (Y2 P1)—Energy

As is often the case, something interesting that Sharon hears when she talks to the individual groups (Gustavo's idea about racing heavier and lighter people from the previous day) becomes a focus for a whole class discussion as a next move.
Sharon wants students to have a sense of purpose for why they are going outside to do an experiment.
Sharon asks Gustavo to make predictions based on his theory and wonders if his theory extends to apply to all small and large things.
These ideas form the conceptual basis for thinking about faster vs. farther.

While I am teaching responsively, I always have to think about what to do next. While planning for the next day, I think about what happened during the lesson, and I identify ideas that might help the class engage. These could be ideas students shared or things they wrote in their notebook. Here, Gustavo was making a rule. I thought it was important to investigate this because I wanted to demonstrate the importance of questioning and testing ideas instead of blindly accepting them.