Tag: communication

Whiteboards vs. Chart Paper

credit: whiteboardsusa.com

I was introduced to concept of “Whiteboarding” when I read Frank Noschese’s fantastic blog post titled, “The $2 Interactive Whiteboard” As a former math teacher and math facilitator I was drawn to whiteboarding and socratic dialogues. The whiteboard is such a simple, low tech tool but promotes collaboration, problem solving, communication, basically all of the 7 mathematical processes that I blogged about a few months ago. If you have a few minutes to spare, read the following 5 pg. article on whiteboarding.

There are so many benefits to whiteboarding in the classrooms. I won’t go into details since you can read them on Frank Nochese’s blog mentioned above. However, one question I brought up to Frank on his post was what the difference was between using a whiteboard and just plain chart paper (which up to this point I used very frequently). Other than the obvious benefit of saving paper and trees, he refered to a researcher Colleen Megowan who studied different types of whiteboarding and the affect on student dynamics. Althought it didn’t actually make it into the research paper, she did look at the differences between chart paper and whiteboards and her observations make perfect sense.

When students collaborate using a chart paper most of the thinking and reasoning usually happens before the marker actually touches the paper. This may be due to the fact that students don’t want to make mistakes. Therefore, when students do start writing on the chart paper, it is a summarization of the conversation and the thinking and reasoning that took place before. In addition, Colleen spoke of the “power of the marker” and the fact that usually it is the same student that ends up with the responsibility with writing on the chart paper. Maybe these students are leaders of the group, have the neatest handwriting, or just get to the marker before everyone else but what these students write is their interpretation of the group’s conversation and may not necessarily represent the group’s collaborative thinking.

When students use whiteboards, the writing usually happens as the students converse, reason, and think collaboratively. The ideas written on the whiteboard evolve as the conversation unfolds and is a better representation of the group’s thinking than if written on chart paper. Because the markings can be easily erased, students are immediately  inclined to write without hesitation. Whiteboards are also less intimidating for students and encourage multiple students to contribute and write. In addition, Megowan spoke about the “power of the eraser” and the fact that writing can be erased changes the group dynamics and allows a new role (the eraser) to emerge within the group.

After reading more literature on whiteboarding and socratic dialogues, I was hooked and immediately saw the benefits not only for math but in all subject areas and needed to have a set of six whiteboards for myself to try out. I wanted whiteboards with similar dimensions to standard chart paper (24″ x 32″). I looked into getting whiteboards from Staples but the cheapest whiteboards with the dimensions I was looking for cost about $28 each (with tax, close to $200 for six). I needed a cheaper alternative and Frank mentioned on his blog that educators were going to homedepot, Lowes, or Rona and purchasing 4′ x 8′ tileboard and cutting them into six smaller sections (24″ x 32″). However, my online searches on these stores’ websites for tileboard came up with nothing. I phoned multiple home depots and Rona’s in my surrounding area and several phone calls later, I finally found a Rona that had one panel of 4′ x 8′ tileboard in stock. With my school board discount, I was able to purchase the panel for $37 and didn’t have to pay for the cutting since Rona gives you the first 3 cuts for free. So all in all, each whiteboard came to approx. $6.17. Not quite $2 whiteboards but I am very happy with my whiteboards and I’m very excited to implement and share the whiteboarding strategy with the teachers in my school board.

I’m not advocating that we abolish chart paper from the classroom. Chart paper still has it’s place for ideas that need to have a permanent fixture in the classroom. (anchor charts, learning goals, success criteria) However, there are situations in the classroom where using whiteboards would be more effective for collaboration, thinking, and reasoning than chart paper. The benefits of whiteboarding shouldn’t be ignored and should have a place in the classroom as well. I would love to hear your comments on how you use the whiteboarding strategy in your classroom.

In my next blog post, I will be looking at various websites that offer online whiteboards that allow students and teachers to collaborate online and see if the whiteboarding concept can be implemented in a digital environment. Perhaps the digital environment would have an effect on group dynamics not seen in typical face to face whiteboarding interactions or perhaps new roles would emerge from collaborating online.

Posted on by Admin 16

Online Gallery Walk Using Lino It

In one of my previous posts about the 3 part problem based lesson, I referred to the third part (reflect and connect) as the most important part of the math lesson since the learning comes from the student work. Students are given the opportunity to explain their math thinking, pose questions, defend their ideas, and make connections with other solutions. The teacher is the facilitator of the discussion as well as a participant. The learning comes from the math community.

The following article describes three approaches to the Reflect and Connect: 1)Math Congress, 2) Bansho, and 3) Gallery Walk.

In this post, I wanted to focus on the gallery walk because to be honest, this is an approach that I don’t use very often when consolidating a math lesson. This is an approach that requires a lot of movement of students in the classroom and could possibly take some time and good management skills to facilitate. In most gallery walks, student solutions are posted around the classroom, and students circulate with sticky notes writing down questions and comments and placing it on the solutions. The idea is for students to read the comments and questions on the stickies about their own group’s solutions and use that feedback to help them prepare the explanations of their work to the class. Problems can arise if students aren’t given enough “wait” time to think of questions or comments to write down on their sticky notes. This can result in comments like, “You spelled multiply wrong.” or “I like how you used the colour red to write your solution.” The goal is to promote higher order thinking and questioning but if students aren’t familiar with a gallery walk or need more time to reflect on the student solutions then perhaps an online gallery walk could be a worthwhile alternative.

Lino it is a great web application that provides you with an online canvas and allows you to post online stickies, pictures, videos, and attachments. You can also share your online canvas with others by sharing its URL. Sharing the URL would allow others to post stickies as well. You can probably see how Lino it could be used to conduct an online gallery walk. To give you an idea of what it could look like, I inserted an screenshot of an online canvas with pictures of four multiplication solutions and stickies with questions and comments posted around them.

The comments/questions were generated by a team of math facilitators when I shared the link with them, which should also give you a good idea of how Lino it could be used for teacher moderation of student work.

By using an online gallery walk, students could post their comments/questions in class or at home and have time to reflect on student work and pose thoughtful questions and comments. Groups could review the feedback the next day and prepare the presentation of their solution to the class.

I would love to hear your thoughts about this alternative approach to communicating in the classroom.

Posted on by Admin 3

A Closer Look at the Three Part Problem Based Lesson

John Van deWalle, Cathy Fosnot, Marian Small, and Marilyn burns are all key researchers when it comes to mathematics in education. According to these researchers, an ideal math lesson consists of three parts. The HWDSB math facilitation team refers to the three parts as: 1) Getting Started 2) Working On It 3) Reflect and Connect.

Let’s just say we are going to teach a grade 5/6 initial three part problem based lesson on multiplication and the goal of this lesson is simply to see what multiplication strategies students are bringing to the table. The “Getting Started” part of the lesson would involve some sort of activation of students’ prior knowledge related to multiplication (simple problem). During the “Working On It” part of the lesson, the following problem could be presented to the class.

29 students are going on a field trip to a museum. The field trip will cost $20 per student. How much will it cost for 29 students to go on the field trip?

This is an example of an open routed question. There is only one answer but there are multiple strategies to get the answer. Therefore, we ask the students to solve the problem in groups and in more than one way. The first strategy will come naturally for some students however, the second strategy may be more difficult to come up with. Again, the goal of the lesson is to see all the multiplication strategies that the students will use solve the problem. As the students “work on it” we would circulate around the classroom asking questions about students’ strategies, guiding students through the process, and allowing mistakes to occur (these will be addressed during the “reflect and connect”). It is also important to note that not every group needs to be finished before moving on to the “reflect and connect”. Sometimes incomplete solutions provide good starting points for classroom discussion.

The third part of the math lesson is the most important part of the lesson but often the part that gets left out by teachers. It is also considered by many teachers as the most difficult part of the math lesson to facilitate. The “reflect and connect” is when the learning of the math concepts really occurs because the learning comes from the student work. This is the part of the lesson where students are given an opportunity to explain their strategies and solutions and where teachers are given an opportunity to focus on key strategies and concepts by guiding a math discussion through strategic questioning. This math discussion is very important because the conversation is less teacher centred and more student centred. Students ask each other questions about their solutions, make connections between their solutions, and defend their math solutions. The goal of the “reflect and connect” is to create the culture of a math community that allows students to take risks and where mistakes are considered to be opportunities for new learning. Ideally, this is what the “reflect and connect” should and could be like however, it takes time to get there. Students need time to learn how to ask appropriate questions, give constructive feedback, and receive constructive feedback. Teachers need time to learn how to ask probing and guiding questions and look for connections between student work.

There are a few ways to conduct a “reflect and connect”. The following article titled, Communication in the Mathematics Classroom explains three different approaches of math communication that can be implemented during a “reflect and connect”:  1) Gallery Walk, 2) Math Congress, and 3) Bansho.

My next post will focus on the gallery walk and a possible way to enhance math communication via Lino it using the following student solutions:

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Posted on by Admin 7