R.E.A.L Resource

I stumbled upon this on Twitter tonight and thought I'd post it...awesome Math resource! The blog posts a "Would You Rather" question, covering a variety of Math topics, that require students to justify their answers (sound familiar??). REAL content, REAL application of Math, what more could you ask for?

Would You Rather?

R.E.A.L. Idea

I saw this on Twitter and it's right on!

If they can do the worksheet, they don't need it. If they can't, it won't help them. Marilyn Adams @jcorippo
— Holly Clark (@HollyEdTechDiva) January 12, 2014

Get R.E.A.L. Learning Opportunities

So, I recently went through a 3 day Buck Institute for Education Project-Based Learning workshop and it was amazing...talk about getting rid of worksheets and getting students engaged in learning! Even if you can't go to one of their trainings they have a great website with a lot of excellent resources for teachers. Check it out...

Project Based Learning for the 21st Century

R.E.A.L Resource

If you haven't heard of or seen this site, it's seriously amazing. It's a collection of videos of teachers teaching awesome lessons and discussing them. So many good ideas and you get to see them in action! (and, yes, they are aligned with Common Core!)

Teaching Channel

Get R.E.A.L. Group Consensus

This is a strategy I learned from my assistant principal this year. It it a way for a group to work together and come up with a group consensus about a particular topic. So after the activity (reading, discussion, video, etc...) each group is given a poster board. On that poster board they need to draw a smaller circle in the middle and a larger circle around that (think of a circle inside of a circle). The outside gets divided into sections (one section per person). So if there are five people in the group, then you divide it into five sections. For a specific amount of time (a couple of minutes) each individual reflects and in their section each student writes down his/her answer to the question, their thoughts, and/or take-aways. Then (as a group) each person shares his/her ideas and in the middle the group writes down common responses. In the end- you have group consensus. After that, each group could share out to the whole class and you can create a class consensus about the topic/activity.

Get R.E.A.L. with QR Codes

So, I've never personally seen this done, but that doesn't mean it hasn't been done...I had the idea today that you could generate QR Codes to create a scavenger hunt for your students! It could be an activity at a family engagement event at school or just away to get your students to review for a test. Each code could contain a question and/or answer that would lead to a new location with a new code.

Get R.E.A.L. with Think-Pair-Share

Just about everyone has heard of Kagan’s Think-Pair-Share cooperative learning activity. Well, here’s the same activity with a twist. In order to be able to do this you will need access to some form of a classroom response system (i.e. clickers, or something similar). You would pass out a clicker to only a portion of your students (half or less) and after your question or directions each student would have to pair up with a classmate that has a clicker (forming partnerships or small groups). They would discuss the question or problem you have proposed and when you ask- they “share” their answer by submitting their response. You could post the responses, discuss them and then move on to the next question or problem and have the students form different groups, basically starting the cycle over again. It’s just another way to get students engaged in the learning process while giving the teacher some feedback to monitor class understanding. This could be done during any step in the learning process from initial teaching to reviewing and assessing.