A Versatile Mainstay for a Productive Math Classroom

@molsen14

 

 

"You are only limited by what you are willing to try! Wipebook Flipcharts provide a low-risk way for students to engage with content and build their mathematical skills."

 

 

Getting Students excited about Math with VNPS  

 

 

How do you get students excited about math? How do you motivate them to see why it’s important? How do you make sure that all your students have a chance to show their thinking? We are in a time where technology provides instant gratification and results.. The issue there is that it doesn’t always lend itself to providing an opportunity for students to take what they are thinking and put it down in writing. As a math teacher, I fully believe that reading and writing are integral parts to understanding mathematics.  Providing my students with a vertical non-permanent surface like a Wipebook Flipchart has been a difference maker!

 

 

 
whiteboard_VNPS_reusable_flipchart

 

 

 Teamwork Makes the Dream Work 

 

 

One of the most fun things to do as a math teacher is to present a group of students with a math problem and give them absolutely no guidance as to how to solve it. (I know, mean, right?) They will often look at me like a deer caught in headlights! I tell them to start discussing what they see in the problem and start writing some information down. As soon as they start doing that, it snowballs from there! I will make a couple of passes around the room to see the Wipebook Flipcharts getting more and more full as students start to make more and more sense of the problem. At that point, I am more of a guide than anything else, as students have taken control of their learning.

 

 

 
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Wipebook Flipcharts go Beyond the Classroom 

 

 

 Just because we live in an age of technology does not mean that we have to be technology dependent. However, this does not mean that we shouldn’t use it to aid learning. One of the coolest things I had was when a student asked me if she could take a picture of an anchor chart that their group had done in class. I asked her why she wanted to do that and she told me that she wanted to upload it to her drive so that she could build her own little digital library of anchor charts so she could review them on her own. Come to find out that she not only did that, but she also shared with her group members and they annotated the charts with examples so they could see the concept in action! The blend of a VNPS plus technology gave a group of students the ability to apply concepts beyond the classroom walls! I then shamelessly stole her idea and started taking pictures of all of our anchor charts and uploaded them to our class drive!

 

 

 
whiteboard_VNPS_reusable_Flipchart

 

 

 Wipebook providing a versatile, reusable learning surface

 

 

A Wipebook Flipchart can do so much for your classroom. Not only can it be used for groups of students to collaborate and write down their ideas, but it can also be used for things like a “parking lot” where students can write questions that they might still have, or as an incentive tracker for them to see real-time progress toward a goal. The possibilities are endless. I use them in conjunction with smaller personal whiteboards when we review for an assessment. We have also used them to do concept maps where we show how different mathematical concepts are connected. We have also used them for games of “Stump the Teacher” where the students have to create a problem that I have to solve.  You are only limited by what you are willing to try! Wipebook Flipcharts provide a low-risk way for students to engage with content and build their mathematical skills.

 

 

Matt Olsen, 7th Grade Math/ Pre-Algebra Teacher, Eastwood Middle School, Ysleta ISD Board.

 

 

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