What I Know About...

This was an excellent way to start off our unit on graphing but can be used for basically any topic you would like.

Students formed into a circle and the only material I needed was a soft toss ball. I started by tossing the ball to a random student and they had three seconds to share one thing they knew about graphs. After stating their fact, they toss the ball to the next student and so on. If a student could not state a fact within the three seconds, they sat down. We continued to toss the ball until there were only two students standing up. 

Such a simple concept but the students loved it. As you know, their competitive side often comes out in games in the classroom. We must of come up with over thirty different facts about graphing in this game. 

Next time we play, I will use this to form a class K-W-L chart for the unit. Rather than doing a brainstorm session on the carpet to fill in the "What I Know" section, we will play the game and have a student (or myself) record all the facts stated by the students to then be placed in that section of the K-W-L chart. 

This is also a wonderful EAL strategy to use in a maths classroom. The best way to help students develop their knowledge of the English language is through oral language. We often struggle or forget to focus on vocabulary in maths, thus this game allows students to verbally express their ideas and have exposure to vocabulary specific to the unit in focus. 

Please let me know how you can use this and/or modify it in your classrooms.

Fractions K-W-L Chart

I normally don't use a K-W-L chart in maths but I decided to give it a go and achieved great success with it. After completing a pre-test, students created a K-W-L chart for fractions. It worked well after a pre-test as students were able to activate their prior knowledge and will in the What I Know section easily. They were also able to create questions and wonderings for the What I Want to Know section based on the questions they were unable to answer on the test and new vocabulary they encountered. 

Although this proved to be a simple task, it links directly to The e5 Instructional Model. This task relates to the explore component of e5 by promoting questioning, eliciting prior knowledge and having students make connections to past learning experiences. The questions and wonderings generated by students in the What I Want to Know section has now guided the sequence of our unit on fractions and become the focus of learning during this unit. 

Olympics K-W-L Chart

I thought it would be a neat idea to create a massive K-W-L chart for our integrated topic on the Olympics and the students loved it too. Each student created their own K-W-L chart and then contributed parts of their charts to our large class one.




















Also, instead of just What I know, What I want to know, and What I've learnt, we also added another column for How I am going to find out. This was a great idea because it helped students come up with a number of resources they could use in their research during this topic.