Mathsational

Card sorts are one of my absolute favorite practice structures. My favorite way to use them is to practice vocabulary or categorization. You can also use card sorts as a matching activity (question matched with answer) as well as ordering (order the steps in a procedure or solution) and grouping multiple representations (graph with a table with function form etc). Some times I like to provide the categories and sometimes I like to allow students to group and regroup while making their own categories. For example, you could give students several parabola graphs. Maybe learners would group based on the number of zeros or the opening direction. You could create the card sort with paper and pencil or digitally. If you choose digital, you should check out Desmos activity builder for sure. You can also check out the Desmos Activity Bank for more. Today in #alg2chat we used a @Desmos card sort to practice factoring sum/difference of cubes #teach180 pic.twitter.com/JnGrlX5E5b...

Here's another fun practice structure: mazes.  I have only made one of these so far. It was pretty work-intensive and it will only work with short questions.  Therefore, I will probably use very few of them with my current teaching schedule. Both consumer math and statistics require long problem setups and/or long detailed solutions.  Algebra might be a better place for these since there are more opportunities for straight-forward numerical answers. None the less, I did make one maze using this template.  The template worked well for the most part but I did end up replacing a few of the textboxes when I could not get my text to wrap and shift correctly. To create your own, you need a bank of questions (multiple choice would be great, but you can make-up your own wrong answers as well.  Beginning with the “start” box, enter each question and use one of the small boxes to place the correct answer and the others for the distractors.  It works best for me to pu...

I’m always looking for low-prep, interactive/collaborative practice structures to offer a variety of ways for my learners to hone their skills.  One of my favorite structures is “Around the Room.” Depending on the format, you may also see this referred to as a scavenger hunt. Basically, you find a series of practice problems for your topic.  I usually just pull from a textbook or a worksheet.  Then you type each of these in large font.  I usually type one question per slide in a Google slides document.  For questions with numerical answers, you can make this into a scavenger hunt.  This is just like a chain activity , but with learners standing rather than sitting.   Next, you post the questions throughout your classroom.  I tape them to the walls, file cabinet, and to the whiteboard.  Students grab a partner and a clipboard as well as a sheet of paper to complete the problems.  If the solutions are complex, learners move from one q...