ONE PAGER AND FLIPGRID IN A MATH CLASSROOM

Have you gone to a training and had a takeaway that makes you excited?

This past week in our site's PD there was an AVID presentation by our AVID site team.  One aspect of it was a round table learning about ONE PAGERS.  I got excited about the prospects of this student generated activity.  Students take a topic and create their own final product about their learning.  The activity allows students to respond with their own imagination while consolidating their learning into a brief one page product - that makes connections between words and pictures.  What a great way to end a unit of study in math - students create their own One-Pager that captures their essential learnings for the unit of study.  I went home and googled one pager examples and came up with the above image.  I am just finishing up a unit on system of equations with my 8th graders - and what a great way for them to capture what they learned during our study.  I believe in rubrics so I also researched rubrics for One-Pagers and found several that I could modify for my class.  I will share examples of next month of my students' work.  But I wanted to share something that was exciting for me this past week and let you know where it ends up.


In addition to this new idea, I also took a tentative step into the world of Flipgrid.  This resource

allows students to verbalize their learning.  I learned about it from my grade level science teacher that I partner up with to do our cross-curricular projects with.  We decided that our current Crayon Project would be a good place to see how this works with our students.  I did my first Flipgrid video with the students last week - where they had to verbalize their rationale for choosing the number of crayon boxes that OMSD needs in order to replace all the boxes in the District.  Students were hesitant at first to have themselves videotaped but after getting them to really focus on their writing it was much easier for them.  One of the mathematical practices is Communicating Reasoning so this resource offers a different way to capture this practice.  I also feel that this is a good 21st Century Skill to develop in that students need to communicate clearly and effectively their reasoning so that others can understand.  For those of you who missed it, Jennifer Merry on January 17 posted a well written description of useful tips for using Flipgrid in your classroom - she has done a great job of giving a sequence of tips to make it easier for you.


This month was sharing two ideas that I have not completed in my classroom but have come across in the past month as something that I am willing to try and see where it goes.  For me, this is one aspect of teaching that I really enjoy - trying something new.  If the end result is something better for my students then it is well worth the time and energy.  If it fails, then I pick myself up and see what else I can learn to make a positive impact with my students that is meaningful and relevant.


Will return next month with an update of both of these new ideas that I am trying.

Teaching and still loving it,

Kevin Stott

De Anza Middle School