The other night I was watching a video lesson from Teaching Channel with my grad school class. Our class is called "Supervision of Learning Environments", and the purpose in watching this video was for us to determine whether or not this particular teacher revised her teaching strategy after a lesson was not quite as successful as she had hoped. Sarah Wessling, the teacher in the video (who is stellar, by the way!), certainly did adapt her plan for the class, and I loved her new idea so much that I adapted the idea for my sixth grade math class!
Sarah had her students use what she called "traveling concept webs" in her high school English class to have the students generate ideas related to The Crucible and connect them to modern day themes. I have used concept maps before, but never had I had them "travel". I love the collaborative aspect to this idea, and I envisioned this as useful way for my students to review for their chapter one summative assessment. Plus, I always love integrating literacy into math...cha-ching!
Each of my six small groups of students had a piece of butcher paper with a math topic in a center circle, forming the hub of the web. The six topics on our concept webs were Number Lines, Prime Factorization, GCF, LCM, Squares & Square Roots, Cubes & Cubed Roots. Each group had three minutes to add supporting details to the web related to the definition of the concept, helpful strategies, and example problems using a variety of methods. Once the timer sounded to end the three minutes, the students rotated one group clockwise (It was also great to have the kids up and moving a bit). This time the directions were slightly different. The students needed to first read everything that was already on the concept map, correcting anything they felt was not accurate. After doing so, they could then continue adding new information. Once again the timer sounded after three minutes, and the students rotated. The third time around, the students were directed to read and correct any information, and they were issued an additional challenge to create a more difficult example than the ones previously listed. The final three minute buzzer sounded, and students returned to their seats. The activity culminated in a gallery walk where the students had the opportunity to quietly look at all six concept webs. On post-it notes, students wrote and posted questions remaining on each topic's concept web. These questions not only were formative in nature, allowing me to see where there were still some misconceptions and confusion, but they were also wonderful collaborative conversation starters. I had the students lead the follow up discussion themselves, answering each other's questions using appropriate math vocabulary and our class experiences as support for their answers. I was truly impressed with how articulate many of my students were, and I always love seeing them help each other learn. So two thumbs up for this activity! I'm keeping traveling concept maps in my arsenal of secret weapons for use in the future as well. :)
