In this second blog post I would like to outline how I extended a Desmos lesson to the next day and how I taught my students to give productive feedback on each other's group posters.
First of all, if you have never tried the activity Desmos: Marbleslides Parabolas, stop what you're doing right now and try it. I used it last year with my accelerated 8th grade math class. To give you some context, we use a model suggested by where in 6th grade students take a prealgebra readiness test (called MDTP out of UC Berkeley) and a MAC test which is 5 MARS tasks covering each of the major Common Core strands. So, it checks where they are at procedurally, as well as where they are at conceptually with their ability to explain their ideas. Then I taught them for 7th and 8th grade, but taught 3 years of math in 2 years (CC 7, CC 8, and CC Algebra). When topics overlapped we used the 8th grade lessons.
Students completed this in partnerships and for those that finished they made a screencast of successfully completing a challenge. Some great examples can be found here and here with a full blog post of instructions.
After seeing their responses to the prompts, I took a screen shot of the question as well as their responses and put them on Google slides. Then I was able to print them so they were 4 slides per page and 4 slides on the back, that folded into a pamphlet (PDF available).
Desmos allows you to make the names anonymous so no one was humiliated by their responses. Some were proud of their lack of precision and claimed which answers were there. I instructed students to first read the question prompt. Then they looked at each responses and rated them with a check if they totally agreed, a carrot (^) if it was right but incomplete, and an X if part of their statement was incorrect and you disagreed. We did this for each response, starting and stopping the class and allowing students to share their critiques of their peers responses. This provided a great opportunity for classroom discourse as well as attending to precision of academic language.
A second activity that I use is gallery walk post it note feedback. This is not a new strategy, but I was constantly frustrated with the unhelpful feedback I was seeing students give, and their peers were disappointed as well. For example, I don't want feedback to be about how colorful it is, how pretty the title is, what they didn't get to finishing, etc. So, I decided to do something about it, and take time to teach them what productive and unproductive feedback looks like. I was inspired by a tweet by Norma Gordon that included this image.
I incorporated it into a Google Slides presentation after Common Core 8th grade students had completed their posters on the Formative Assessment lesson "Solving Linear Equations in One Variable." Basically students categorized equations as being always, sometimes, or never true and making the connection to infinite, one, and no solution, respectively.
After this, students were given a post it note and given two directives: write down an aspect of the group's poster that you agree with and why. Also, write down an aspect of their poster that you disagree with and give them a suggestion that will move them to revise their work (an example from the slides is: Have you tried see if zero is a solution to the equation?)
These big ideas came from reading Dylan Wiliam's Embedded Formative Assessment book and taking an online course called Formative Assessment insights. The research says that students are more invested in their work when they are given feedback by their peers. The goal, is students realize their mistakes and fix them.
By reviewing the above slides with them, students came up with disagreeing tactfully about 2-x=x-2 being always true and they showed how substituting x=1 did not make it true.
How have you extended a Desmos lesson to the next day without computers productively? Also, please share how you have succeeded in getting students to give productive feedback to their peers.
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