Problem Solving in Math and Google Classroom

It has been a while since I shared some of my students' work via blogging.  It's been a busy year!  I am hoping to be more consistent this year with posting work and how the work evolves for both my students and for me.

My school professional learning community has focused on student discussion in mathematics and problem solving over the past two school years.  My students are developing more and more skills for problem-solving.

First, students follow a week long process with problem-solving that I developed with a colleague, Carina Pruitt, based on research and professional reading, How To Solve It, By G.Polya.  We took the approach for a week long practice so students had time to get to know the problem, have extended time to discuss the problem, and come up with a strategy to solve the problem.  All of this is done with a partner to give support, offer discussion and debate for students as they solve.

Here is sample problem my students have been solving:

 The principal wants to buy 8 pencils for every student at her school.   There are 859 students in the school.

You will notice there is no question with the information.  On the first day students simply list the things that are "known" and "unknown" in the problem and craft questions you could ask for the given information.  This is a day of getting to know the information and the problem with their partner.  On the second day students are given the question and write a strategy statement.  What is the question asking them to find, what do they know and what math strategy will they use to find the solution.  They then work to create a visual model and then a number model to solve the problem.  Students do all of these steps with paper and pencil.

It is on the third day that they take the problem solving digital.  They work with their partner and solve the problem with visual and voice recording.  We use the app Doceri, but Explain Everything and other screencasting apps work just as well.  Here is a student sample of the above problem.  The question they were answering is how many pencils will the principal need to buy for every student to have 8 pencils.

Students submit the videos to a Google Classroom assignment, but as you know, that limits to just being viewed and given feedback by me, the teacher.  BUT, Google Classroom has the ability to post videos to a class wide thread. 

This week I will ask students to submit the video as an assignment, but also post it to the assignment as a new post to the class, the video because it was uploaded to the assignment is stored in the student's Classroom Drive Folder, by posting it to the class pages others can view it, see different thinking and leave a comment for the student, the discussion around this problem has now grown to a new thought partner. If each student watches another video from someone in his/her assigned group (meaning they solved the same problem), they are being critical of others' work, improving their math discussion and ability to give feedback, possibily learning some new information as well!

Play and Imagination: Not a Box

Ben Kovac's and I have been working hard to bring play back into our classrooms.  It is always a challenge to find time and space to do this work, but the reward is worth it.  Play has been a conversation we have dipped into this year and students are always excited to talk about it.  The energy changes in the room, imagination and fun start to increase and smiles arrive on faces.

We used the  brilliant book, Not a Box by Antoinette Portis to start our work around imagination. As one of my students said, "I haven't used my imagination in a long time."  We are working to change this for our students.  I wanted students to try to not use an idea already presented in the book, and it try not to duplicate another's idea.  In the end, the box became whatever the student decided.  

Book Creator was the app that worked best for us to recreate the format of the Antoinette Portis book, to transform the box into something imaginative. 

Here is a link to the ebook.


How are you bringing play into your life?

Ferguson in Class

Watching the Grand Jury decision on Monday, I knew that class would be focused on Ferguson Tuesday.  I had worked with my students earlier in the year about stereotypes and how young people, specifically young black students can be viewed by others.  We had not talked about the specific events of Ferguson, Mike Brown, race or justice.  All things I wanted to bring into my classroom Tuesday.

"Where to start?  I teach nine year olds.  Fourth graders."  These were my thought following the announcement of the grand jury decision to not charge Darren Wilson.

My students!

  I went directly to a resource shared on Twitter under the hashtag #FergusonSyllabus.  This is a resource teachers have been contributing to since the events this summer when Michael Brown was killed.  First, I didn't know how much my students knew about the events, I started with a NewsELA article and talked through some ideas around race, grand juries, and the focus on race in these events.  I allowed my students to journal about feelings, questions, reactions and reflections.  I used parts of the Facing History Michael Brown lesson to have students determine the meaning of stereotype, prejudice, justice, repair, fairness, peace, and community.  We discussed some of the questions from the lesson and some of the bigger ideas connected to the definition of the words above.  We then listened to J. Cole's Be Free, and the Sam Cooke 1963 song, Change is Going to Come.

First, we re-established our classroom norms of this is a safe space, ideas and opinions are respected even if we disagree, sharing ideas is a choice and some may choose not to share.  I also had the honest conversation about the challenges of discussing these topics and issues.  It's hard, challenging and people of all ages and backgrounds struggle to discussion it, express themselves and engage in it.  Yet, it is necessary to discuss to create change and develop understanding of the issues.

After the work, students shared on Todays Meet ideas, feelings and understandings.  Here are some of their ideas I shared on #FergusoninClass.  If you haven't checked out the hashtag on Twitter, do, as many students are sharing their ideas.


"I feel sad because we don't have a lot of peace."

"I'm afraid of the people dying in our community."

"I think it's important to talk about this because when you just keep all the things in your head that creates stress."

"It's hurting me and others."

"I think that people should speak up and show love to different races."

"You need to give people justice.When someone says stop that mean stop because people are hurting people."

I am so proud of their work, their engagement with tough topics and their work to make their community a better place.

Discovering Play

It seems that the classroom has many influences and pressures that in turn become the influences and pressures on our students.  As a math and science teacher, I feel the constraints of testing windows, lesson plans, assessments, grading and making sure my students are best prepared for what's next academically.  In that pressure we tend to take everything very seriously and expect nine year olds to take it just as seriously.  I am passionate about my job, educating my students and making sure they are doing the best they possibly can each and everyday.  Yet, in all the education business that all of us are focused on, we sometimes forget about who our kids are.  They are our nine year olds.  Let us not forget what it means to be nine, to be a kid. So it needs to be asked, where is the play?

Play has become a dirty word in school.  I use it daily to get kids back on task, by saying, "quit playing, quit playing around, etc."  With all we have to do there does not seem a place or time for play.  Albert Einstein told us, "Play is the highest form of research."  We know that play can lead to creativity, exploration, build relationships and enrich our lives.  Why can't playing and learning happen together?

Some Chicago colleagues and I were so inspired by Kevin Carroll's 2014 ISTE keynote about his journey and the themes of play, creativity, and relationships that led to his great success.  We decided this was something our kids must experience as well.  Kevin was kind enough to invite us to his Chi-Talk Event in which he and his team worked to inspire Chicago's kids to listen, learn and lead and rise up.  Kevin's work is truly where it started, we simply hope to continue his great work.

Ben Kovacs and I decide to work on a unit of study for our students at two very different schools.  Ben works on the North side and I work on the South side, yet play is universal to us all, we decided the plan could be collaborative and reach all kids no matter their zip code. We worked to create the #ChicagoPlay site to host our inspiration, essential ideas and questions, and our kids' work. We hoped to use Kevin's inspiring work and then allow our students to play again.  We aspire to have our students become ambassadors of play and bring it to others.  But first, we had to bring it back to them.  We started by having kids define play, what it means to them and its feelings and emotions.  We let them see a great video from Kevin's work at Nike about Tag and play.  The truth is, they struggled.  No one has asked them about play, many of them have lost touch with play.  After blogging, we looked at which words we saw the most using a word cloud.

We have work to do around play.  But it's the best kind of work, it's thoughtful, inspiring, creative, imaginative, freeing.  My students next task was to think outside of the box, literally.  We used the book,  Not a Box by Antoiniette Portis.  In this book, the box can become anything you imagine.  My students were nine again when we read and predicted what the box was going to be on each page.  My students then had a chance to recreate, Not a Box using their imaginations and the Book Creator app.   Just as the rabbit in the story is pictured simply in the box so were my students.  Then they used their imaginations to create something much better than a box.  

One of my students commented after finishing our work for the day with play, "I haven't used my imagination this much in a really long time."  It's time to let them play.

I AM....Powerful

I was lucky enough to attend Kevin Carroll's keynote at the ISTE conference this summer and hear his powerful story about how play impacted his life trajectory.  Then I was fortunate to attend his inspiring Chicago event, #CHITALK in which he worked with athletes and other's who had a Chicago connection and had inspiring successes to share with Chicago's youth.   Angela Davis was one of the first speakers and she talked about affirmations and having the kids state who they are, who they want to be seen as, and who they want to grow to become, all powerful stuff.  She had them complete it with simply stating, "I AM..." and then the word or phrase.

Angela Davis at #CHITALK inspiring students.

Angela and the entire team at #CHITALK inspired all day.  This inspiration paired with the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and the murder of Mike Brown made me realize that students in my class needed to examine the way they are viewed by others and self, and how they wanted to be viewed.  We discussed the terms and ideas that they have heard about them and other young people and in my students' case other young black people.  We came up with terms both positive and negative about young people.  Then we took on the task of creating a bank of words about how my students wanted to be viewed, what words represented who they wanted to become and what they wanted the world to know about them as individuals.

We did the activity first with students taking each other's pictures, using the PicART app and placing the I am words over the photo.  

These turned out well, but I wanted to make this into a more powerful piece that included the connection to Chicago, my kids and their powerful affirmations.  Our class set of iPad 2's do not have the best camera, so I simply used my iPhone to take each students picture again, all with the green background.  I then stopped on my way home from work and took a shot of the city skyline.  I then used Keynote to create a more dynamic font for the I AM statements.  I built the font over the photo then add the student photo via green screen to iMovie.  From here I found the inspirational song from American Authors. 

The best part is my students LOVED IT.  And Angela Davis was kind enough to tweet them about how inspired she was by them.   Their first step into becoming who they say they are and seeing other's value their vision.  

Learning Space Matters

Last year was my first year with mobile furniture with fourth graders.  There was so much we learned together about learning, space, relationships and ourselves as people.  One of my biggest take aways was simple.  When you let kids be in charge, they are empowered.  They are empowered to learn, empowered to find or create space they want or need, they are empowered to ask for more, and they are empowered to learn more.

It could easily be seen as a project about space and furniture.  But it was always a project about learning, relationships, and valuing the learner.  What my students told me time and time again via survey, conversation or with action was when I have a choice, when my voice matters, when I am in control as the learner, I will be at my best.  When I am a part of a community, when my person is valued, when I can build relationships, I can also learn.

Furniture was the tool that amplified what my classroom community valued.  It allowed most of my kids to create a space that worked for their learning as individuals and as members of a group. It made the shift to a more student centered space, it made more of the space about learning, it made my students reflect more on what they needed to do their best in multiple learning experiences.

Here is some of their work!

Digital Tools in the Math Classroom

Last year, I was able to having my math block work on a four center rotation for students.  The biggest difference this year is I do not have a math curriculum to follow, so I am blending a variety of resources to meet the Common Core State Standards and still meet my students' needs and only have three centers with about five more minutes at each one. Here is how I have designed my math block with technology tools to support my students, allow them to explain their thinking or practice skills.

Teacher Center

My students load an Explain Everything file that I have created with the lesson and practice problems they will complete with me at the teacher center.  I can make my file in Google Drive, export as a PDF and then load into Explain Everything.  Once I have changed it to an Explain Everything project I upload to Dropbox and my students easily downloaded from Dropbox to their iPad.  This workflow allows my students to all have the lesson on their personal device along with the projected version and with the Explain Everything tools they can work right in the file.  Students can then save their work to their device to reference later.  Although I haven't attempted this yet, the Explain Everything files can also be uploaded to Youtube for students for future use, or for absent students.  Explain Everything is a tool to grow with as it allow video, pictures, voice recording over slides and other tools I hope to use with my students as we advance in our math work.

Example of a PDF loaded to students via Explain Everything.

Independent Work Center

My students complete independent work from a variety of sources, but mostly use paper and pencil at the Independent Work Center.  I find that students like to write with their finger, but also can get a lot done with paper and pencil.  The work my students do here is mostly review problems of previous lesson's skills.  I am using Everyday Math math boxes, although I am assigning pages out of sequence and only relevant problems to my students learning so far this year.  They are also working in St Math, which is a great conceptual program that is image based and viewed by students as puzzles that can be organized by strand by teachers via the website.  My students get access to problems that are interactive and can see puzzle progress as well as percentage progress.  The program is also helpful for teachers as it shows areas of struggle for students in hurdle, shows time on task for students, and completion level by student.  I am also using Learn Zillion to review skills or reteach skills with students.  Learn Zillion not only has a rich bank of resource videos that are organized well, but they play on students' iPads.  Teachers can favorite lessons or strands, create assignments and due dates for individuals or classes.  They also have guided practice and quizzes if that is of interest,  I build a practice set of problems for the skill for students that is differentiated based on the group's current ability level.  Learn Zillion allows you to have student log in and teachers can assign videos to specific students or all students.  It's a great way to review concepts, allow students to practice and target lessons based on student need.

Problem Solving Center

My final center is a problem solving.  This has a mixture of word problems, math games and video lessons with practice.  I have my students solve real world math word problems via Doceri.  The students use Doceri as a whiteboard to solve the problem, but also talk through their problem solving process.  The standards of mathematical practice are exhibited on many levels when students solve and discuss their thinking.  My students are also using Doceri to record math game scores and practicing target skills.  Everyday Math games are a great tool for students to practice and also allow variety of problems with cards or dice. I also add components to games, for example, my students were practicing making and saying large numbers with the EM game Number Top It, but because they also needed practice with expanded form and written form, I added that as a score sheet component.

Below is an example of a student problem solving!