Reading Apprenticeship Inspired Assignment or Lesson

This lesson is done during the first week or two of class. There’s nothing students are expected to know up to this point.  Students are being introduced to the focus of College Algebra, functions, how to approach reading a math text, and this algebra class, where not much is entirely new. I chose this because students often say, “I know that” or just skip to example problems.  I want them to realize how and see the value in reading the words of the text and surfacing schema.  

In the week's discussion they will watch a short think aloud video of me starting to read the first section of the text.  For their initial post they will identify two maneuvers they saw – heard me use, indicating what I said or did, and classify each metacognitive maneuver.  They also will record and upload their own think aloud (1.5-2 minutes) for some section of the current week's reading.  Their follow-up post has them watch and reflect upon a classmate's posted think aloud, noting something a classmate does that is similar to what they do or particularly effective manuever, as well as, something that was different in their approach.  

This activity introduces metacognition conversations and the think aloud which students will be asked to engage in several times during the semester.  It also has students practicing and noticing their own metacognition, as well as, noticing the similarities and differences in their approaches to making sense of the text.

Details of set-up and what students do are provided here.

The assignment in Canvas can be found here.  Feel free to copy and edit to meet your needs.

The text I have chosen for this class is Precalculus: An Investigation of Functions (2nd Ed).   I supplement this with chapters from their earlier College Algebra: An Investigation of Functions that includes matrices, sequences, and series.  I like their approach of starting with the basic constructs of functions, gradually reviewing various maneuvers like factoring and solving equations as they go.  Then each subsequent chapter looks at a type of function in more depth, hitting on the basic function concepts again and again.