I’ve mentioned in several of my most recent posts the technology bootcamp I attended at the end of the summer. I’m going to mention it again because it really is just such a great PD opportunity – districts take note, when you let the TEACHERS run your PD, it’s actually useful to the other TEACHERS.
Our district, like many districts, is in a bit of a budget crisis. One thing they tried to tell us at the start of the year was to make less copies. I use a lot of copies, because my students do interactive notebooks. I am maybe trying to brainstorm a way to use less paper doing that next year, but I really believe in the INB process, especially for my at-risk students who are often lacking a lot of organizational and note-taking skills. So, I’m trying really hard this year to make as few OTHER copies as I can. I have a lot of card sorts, question stacks, and other activities I can reuse from previous years, but I’m always looking to add new activities and improve my instruction every year.
One of the sessions in our tech bootcamp that I attended was a Google Slides 102 session. You can view the presentation from that session here – it was presented by Evan Mosier. As I was sitting in it, I wasn’t super floored at first, but then I realized the potential some of these ideas had to help me use less copies and still be interactive!
So, I’m sharing a few of these Google Slides activities I’ve made. I’ve linked them so that it will force you to make your own copy in your Google Drive when you open it! That way, you can make any changes you’d like.
For each of these, I assigned them with the “make a copy for each student” option in Google Classroom. Each student has their own copy and changes that they make can be viewed by the teacher through Google Classroom, and it doesn’t change the original document or anyone else’s.
1. Solving Linear Inequalities Critique, Correct, and Clarify
Our district math teachers were introduced to the Mathematical Language Practices in a PD session in August. Our department has decided to focus on incorporating one of these each quarter into our instruction, and this quarter’s focus has been Critique, Correct, and Clarify.
To set up this activity, I gave each student at the end of class the previous day one inequality on a post it note. We had just worked some example inequalities together as a class. They solved their one inequality and gave it to me. I put all the post it notes on a page of my Rocketbook (which we received for free at the tech bootcamp PD!) to digitize all their solutions. I went through each solution and selected some that were correct, and then several that were incorrect for interesting reasons (ex: they forgot to flip the symbol, they combined like terms across the symbol, they combined unlike terms, etc.). I took a screenshot of those from the Rocketbook pdf and pasted them onto each slide. You’ll notice those are not part of the background, so you could delete them and replace them with your own students’ work! Then, we did the first one together, going step by step and at each step either typing something in the “done well” box or “mistakes” box. If there was a mistake, students re-solved the inequality on a whiteboard and typed the correct solution in the purple box.
This was very difficult for my students, but I think it was very beneficial as well. They are not used to critiquing completed work, they just go through a process by rote and then that’s their answer. Our department is trying to work on getting them to analyze their own work. It’s going to be a long process but I think this was a good step.
Tip: you have to make sure to tell students they have to click the textbox icon before they can start typing – almost all of mine tried just clicking in the boxes forEVER until they finally asked how to type!
I stole this idea from a tweet I saw sometime last year that unfortunately I only saved the image from and not the actual tweet, so I cannot remember who it was – if you know, let me know so I can credit them properly!
There’s a lot of vocabulary when starting to work with linear functions: function, linear, slope, x-intercept, y-intercept, domain, range…it’s hard to keep it all straight! So this was just a practice using all those terms. There are relations in each green bordered box to the side (they’re all sets of coordinates), and in the center there are descriptions. Students drag the the relation underneath the description that matches it.
I had students list all of the relevant information for each relation, then search for the description that matched it, but I feel like the reverse would be better – read a description, then search for the relation that matches it.
3. Quadratic Transformation Matching
As we started our discussion of function transformations in Pre-Calc, I wanted to practice by starting with a function they were really familiar with. I found this card sort online (again, I can’t remember where, so maybe someone knows so I can credit the person!) but decided to make it a digital card sort instead. There is a set of parabolas, a set of equations, and a set of written descriptions of the relevant transformations. Students simply drag a parabola, equation, and description that all describe the same transformation on x^2 to the same row of the background.
This was a perfect way to introduce transformations and get them comfortable with which numbers did what to the equation. There were a few typos in the original card sort I had downloaded, which of course made things difficult, but I think I have corrected them all.
4. Logarithm Properties Memory
Last year, I did this Logarithm Properties domino activity that was pretty good, but ended up being confusing because apparently my students don’t know how to play dominos? Looking for more activities this year, I found a memory activity that was intended to be printed out and the cards flipped over in the traditional memory matching style. In my bid to avoid printing, I googled to see if there was a trick to creating a memory game in google slides that I could use and there is! So I took this memory match game and the logarithm dominos and combined them to make a Memory game of my own. Links to both original activities and the blog post I read to discover how to make Memory on Google Slides are in the activity file!
This is the only one so far that I haven’t used but I am excited about it. A subtle element of competition is good for the students I have in Algebra 2 this year, but it needs to be not so much competition that a student who is behind just gives up. I think this will be the perfect mix, because it also isn’t about speed – they have to take turns anyways, and I’m going to encourage them to help each other with the problems as they go. If I remember, I’ll come back and update once I’ve done this with students!
Have you made any similar Google Slides type activities that you’d like to share? Any ideas for other activities that could be adapted in this way? I’m excited to continue making activities like this as I go through the school year.
Oh, and another cool thing: when you go into the files to look at them in google classroom, you can insert a comment on a particular item that a student dragged to say, “hey, this function has a RANGE of {0}, not a DOMAIN of {0}”, etc, and it’s much easier to give quick feedback to each student. If you wanted, you could even do this live as students are working (or of course, you could just go talk to them). Another teacher I know also suggested that if you were home sick but still able to be on a computer, you could assign one of these with your sub and give live feedback to students throughout the day from home! (When I take sick days, I’m typically far too sick to be typing coherent comments, but maybe you’re home with your sick kid or something and could make it happen!)
Mastalio. Math. Mavericks. 