Month: May 2016

Google Forms and Presentations

Google Forms

My 3-5th grade classes are finishing up their math genius hour projects this week.  Fittingly, it’s the last the week of school so we made it just in time!  I have two days to fit in 15 project presentations.  This last round of projects lasted around two months and the final projects will soon be revealed.

Students created questions, found a math connection, researched and are presenting this week.  During the last two years students present their projects and the audience asks questions about the topic. This technique seemed to work but I tended to have the same students ask the presenter questions.  Around five or so of the same students asked the presenters questions.  In a class of 25 that’s not ideal.  It was great that the students were asking questions, but five or fewer was disappointing.  Bottom line – the audience wasn’t as engaged as they should be.  So this year I decided to give the audience more of a voice in the process during genius hour presentations.  This actually stemmed from a class that I took this spring about using Google tools in the classroom.

One of the assignments required students to create a Google Form that could be used in class.  My first thought was to create a student rubric for presentations.  I decided to create my own after dabbling around the Internet for a few examples. Initially the form was going to be used by the teacher to evaluate presentations.  After starting the form I changed my thinking.  I thought about possibly having all of my students use the same form to evaluate the presenter.  The genius hour feedback form was built from that idea. Click the image below for the form.

Feedback Form

This week my students have been using the form to evaluate their peers.  Students are asked to present their projects while the audience listens.  At the very end (not at the beginning as some students want to get a head start) students take an iPad and scan a QR code to access the Google Form.  Individual students evaluate the speaker and submit their response.  It’s not confidential as students have to pick themselves (the evaluator) and the presenter.  I tell the students that this information will not be revealed to the presenter.  So far it’s been working well.  The last presentation took less than 2 minute to collect 21 feedback submissions.  Another bonus is that you can have a class conversation about the overall quality of the presentations.

Data

I then export the file to Excel, hide the evaluator column and then print out the sheet for the student.  The student is then able to reflect on the data at a later time.

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The form needs some work as I’m thinking of making some of the questions more clear.  I’d also like to add a section on the form where students can ask the presenter questions.

Rates and Pizza

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My third grade class is studying unit prices this week.  They investigated in/out tables on Monday and determined how to find missing values.  During this process students started to explore strategies to solve function machines.  The class transitioned to unit prices on Wednesday.  This was more challenging, especially when students needed to find the price per ounce.  Being able to round answers and place the decimal in the appropriate place seemed to cause some issues.  Students knew what operation to use but had trouble placing the decimal.

On Friday students started off the day with a brief activator involving price per ounce.  Students were given three Starbuck cup sizes.  They had to find the price per ounce.  Students worked in groups and experimented with different strategies to find the right place to put the decimal.  The groups checked their reasonableness by multiplying their unit price answer to find the total price.  This took around 10-15 minutes.  Click here to find the template.

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After this activity the class formalized a process to find the unit price of an item.  We then moved to the main project for today’s lesson.

Students were given iPads and asked to visit a pizza site.  The site was up to the student.  Students visited Papa Johns, Pizza Hut, Giordano’s, Dominos and Lou Malnati’s websites.  They were asked to customize one large pizza.  Students put together their dream pizza and found the final price.  In order to be consistent students were told that each large pizza has around nine pieces.

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Students took a screen shot of their fake order and saved it to their camera roll.  They submitted their screen shots and added a caption that included a number model of the unit price.

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I’m reviewing the student screenshots tonight and am finding that students are becoming better at understanding unit rates.  Next week we’ll be looking at better buy problems.

 

Reasonable Answers

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This week my third grade class started to learn about measurement.  Measurement is one of those topics that doesn’t see much light of day.  Number lines and computation are very prevalent in elementary classrooms, not so much with measurement.  This is especially the case when it comes to metric measurement.  Every grade level teaches a form of measurement, but conversions aren’t discussed on a regular basis.

As I was looking for ways to review I came across a gram measurement set in my school’s storage room.  I was looking for a digital scale but couldn’t fine one.  I dusted off the tiny weights and also found a balance.

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Winner!  So I brought them back to class.  The next day my third grade class had a discussion about how to calibrate a balance and use small weights to find measurements.

While reviewing I started to find that students struggled with the reasonableness of their answers.  They had trouble identifying what a gram, 100, or even 100 grams really looked like.  They had an easier time with conversions, but that is more of a process and not an understanding.  So I brought the class to the back table and found an empty container.

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It measured exactly 510 grams.  It was empty so students knew that it couldn’t be that exact amount Students took turns and added the weights to see if they could balance the equation items.

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Not balanced

Students were excited to add/deduct the weights to find balance.  It seemed like a puzzle to them.  The balance was even at 41 grams.

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Even steven

It took a small amount of time before students calculated that the oats would weight approximately 510 – 41 = 469 grams.  This also led to a quality discussion about the weight of products vs. the container that it fits in.

This was decent activity to bring out a better understanding of what a gram really is.  Next week we’ll be exploring kilograms.

Circles and Area

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My fourth grade crew started to explore circles this week. They looked at the circumference, diameter, radius and area of circles. They’ve had a bit of experience with them earlier in the year during Pi Day. That day was long forgotten this week. The class started with a large dose of reviewing the concept of area and circles. I noticed that some of the students wanted to immediately use the formula to find the area of a circle. For a few, the process of giving the formula to the kids has caused a headache down the road. They know the formula and some even have it memorized. When asked to define the area of a circle they revert back to formula. When asked what the formula means some of the students repeat the formula back to me. This is a red-alert in my mind – indicating a lack of conceptual understanding.

The class went back a few steps to the area of rectangles and triangles on a grid. After a brief review I observed that students were able to 1) describe what area is 2) Use a grid to count squares to determine the area. Students then said it would be much easier to use the formula. So we used the formula and then went back to circles.

Instead of jumping to the formula like I said earlier, the class took out centimeter grid paper. Students traced circular items onto the grid paper and counted the squares.

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This seems boring looking back and as I write this but it was a worthwhile activity in retrospect. Students then found the radius of the traced item. It was fairly easy as students could count the centimeter squares.  They used the radius, multiplied it by itself and found the product. They then multiplied that by 3.14, which is our abbreviated version of Pi.

The goal was to get our answers between three and four centimeters. Many of the students had trouble at first but refined their counting methods to be more accurate. I could see some of the students making the connections between using the formula and an understanding of the area of a circle. Eventually students started checking their work by using the area of a circle formula.

Near the end of class students started asking what happens when we can’t actually count the squares of an object. Another student mentioned that we use the formula. That brought out a quality discussion about understanding the formula and why it works.  We’re making progress.