Personal Whiteboards
Quick Strategies Series: Part 3
I have seen the use of personal whiteboards for students to practice their Math and have used them myself to get to know their answers.
What you will need:
- One whiteboard for each student (check out the hack at the end of the article on making make-shift whiteboards)
- A marker pen for each student
- An eraser — tissue paper or hand towels work great — for each student
- Prompts you will give the students — short enough that the whiteboard has sufficient space for the answer.
Here’s how the whiteboard strategy works:
- Each student collects his/her whiteboard, marker and eraser.
- Show students the prompt you want them to answer — it could be a simple question, a math problem they are solving, anything!
- Let students work on the prompt on their whiteboard and hold it up to show you when they are done.
- Acknowledge student responses on the whiteboard as they are shown, giving feedback.
Why I love this strategy:
It allows students to concentrate on their own work, rather than be distracted by who finished the question already or how they did it. They are not influenced by others in terms of technique and time to get to the solution. Students are also able to quickly erase and correct any mistakes that they see.
Hack for making whiteboards if you don’t want to purchase new ones:
Insert a white sheet of paper in a Sheet protector and you will have your whiteboard! One that students can add to their binder! :)
On A Teacher’s Hat, we want to share quick strategies that you can easily implement in your class. We would love for you to contribute to our collection! Send us an email at a.teachers.hat@gmail.com. :)
