Level

Grades K-12th

 

Cost

Free (after creating a username and password)

 

www.teachingchannel.org

 

Type of Video

Excerpts of classroom lessons, which include whole class, small group, and teacher reflection.  

 

Length of Videos

2 minutes to 26 minutes     

 

Number of Videos

Website reports 162 “math” videos 

 

Content Domains

• K-8 CCSS-M Content Standards: Counting and Cardinality; Operations and Algebraic Thinking; Number and Operations in Base 10; Number and Operations - Fractions; Measurement and Data; Geometry; The Number System; Expressions and Equations; Functions; Statistics and Probability

• 9-12 CCSS-M Content Standards:  Algebra; Functions; Modeling; Geometry; Statistics and Probability

 

Description of the Videos 

• The video collection is organized by grade level and topic, which are not specific to mathematics teaching and learning.

• The videos are tagged using, at most, three keywords that describe the grade level, mathematical content, CCSS-M Standard, and/or mathematical teaching practice.

• Video collection includes a search feature that allows the user to search videos by mathematical content, grade band, teaching practice.

• There seems to be two major foci for the videos - mathematics teaching practices (e.g. “giving efficient directions,” “think time and collaborative learning,” and “formative assessment using U-P-S strategy”) and mathematics lesson ideas (e.g. “collaborate to solve inequalities” and “statistical analysis to rank baseball players.”)

• The content of the videos varies. Many of the videos include excerpts of classroom lessons that follow a launch-explore-summarize structure. The launch involves the teacher setting up the activity while interacting with the whole class. The excerpts from the explore portion focuses on small groups of students collaborating on the mathematical task. The excerpts of the summary involve a whole class discussion about the students’ work on the mathematical activity.  All of these videos include a voice-over commentary in which the teacher(s) reflects on pedagogical decisions and situates the decisions in the broader scope and sequence of the students’ mathematical learning.  

• The length of the videos vary greatly as does the number of excerpts from classrooms. 

 

Usefulness of the Videos

• Although many of the videos are brief, they do provide clear representations of particular mathematics teaching practices in classrooms.  These practices include scaffolding and supporting students’ mathematical reasoning, establishing classroom norms for student collaboration and discourse about mathematics, and setting up and implementing mathematical tasks that maintain the task’s level of cognitive demand

• A number of the longer videos include multiple small groups of students collaborating on a mathematical task.  Some of the excerpts provide representations of students’ mathematical thinking (e.g. algebraic thinking, proportional reasoning, conjecturing, reasoning-and-proving.)

• A few of the videos provide clear representations of ways teachers control the classroom lesson, such as using hand and voice signals to get students’ attention when they are working in small groups, asking funneling questions during whole class and small group discussions, and giving clear, descriptive instructions as to how the students will engage in the mathematical tasks

• Several of the videos provide opportunities to observe how technology is integrated into students’ investigation of mathematical ideas (e.g. using ICT to investigate circle theorems) and how 

• technology is coupled with students’ mathematical modeling (e.g. using trigonometric functions to calibrate drones.)

 

Ancillary Materials

• All of the videos include a brief description of the school system of the participating teachers/coaches/principals, objective of the video, and a small set of reflection questions for the viewer

• Most of the videos include transcripts

• Besides the transcript, many of the “Teaching Practice” videos include: lesson plans; instructional materials (e.g. curriculum materials, activity worksheets, technology instructions); and/or written teacher commentary about the lesson.

 

Author/sponsor

The Teaching Channel, a non-profit organization