Managing Your Content

Woot Math has content for K-12, so regardless of what you are looking for, you’ve come to the right place! To get started, you can first select your grade using the left-hand navigation or search.


You can further filter search results by selecting a specific number of tasks and subject, as shown:


To view the Adaptive Learning content, select the Grades 3-7 option as shown:


Any of this content can be added to My Content, which will allow you to edit, assign, preview, and more. Learn more about how to assign content to your students here.

Study Time – Fun with Statistics

Task #1

The activity starts with a tap-an-image problem. Students tap the outlier in the data.
 
Task 1: Tap the Outlier

– Task 1: Tap the Outlier –

This is a good refresher if your students are familiar with the concept of an outlier. If they aren’t, it is a good opportunity for instruction. I recommend lingering a little on the context here. Discussing what the data means primes a discussion about hard work and a growth mindset. Although the data is not real, it helps students understand what an outlier could be in a real world context.

Task #2

Task 2 is a review of different types of correlation. We thought it was a weak correlation. Since there is only one outlier, some students may argue that it is strong correlation. After your students submit a response, you can have a discussion by de-selecting the “Reveal Answer” option. Then you can view and discuss the results of the class without revealing the right answer. You can also press the “Assign Groups” button to automatically create groups for small-group discussion.
 

– Assign Groups Feature –

Task #3 and #4

Tasks 3 and 4 both provide an equation of a line representing best fit, and students are asked to determine a test score given study time. They also highlight an interesting feature of the short answer task type. While designing a task, you can set it to accept equivalent forms of the correct answer. Click on the gear icon to set the various equivalence options.

 

– Edit Equivalence Options –

For this task we turned off operations because an answer of 0.1*3+0.5 doesn’t seem like they have quite figured it out yet. If operations were on, the tool would accept 0.1*3+0.5 as a correct answer. We left fractions on because converting 0.8 to a fraction is helpful extra practice. There’s nothing wrong with that.

– Task #3: Accepted Answers –

In the answer blank you can also separate multiple correct answers with a semicolon. As long as the number comes first, the software will give you access to the equivalence tools. If you do a letter or word first, it will treat the answer as a string and let you change the number of typos allowed. The way we have the answer box setup, it will accept responses of 0.8, 80%, B- or any fractional equivalent to 0.8. This way your students will not get it wrong if they think outside the box, interpreting a grade of 0.8 as a B-.

Get started by previewing the poll right now with the link below. Or, login to wootmath.com and search for Study Time in the Shared Gallery.

Visit our page on formative assessment for more strategies on implementing ideas like this in your classroom.

Tap an Image Error Identification Weekly Woot

Tap on the Mistake Student Responses

Tap an Image Error Identification Weekly Woot

This week we have a short post talking about how to leverage the tap an image task type in Woot Math Polls to help promote error detection and the standards for mathematical practice.

This poll focuses on slope intercept form and is aligned to HMH module 6 lesson 1. It can be found using hash tag #hmh or #hmh6.1 if your school uses HMH, this is a great way to search for other tasks aligned to this publisher.

Task #1
The first task in this poll asks students to tap on a mistake in the reasoning. There are two mistakes, this is intended to help facilitate discussion among the students.

Task 1 - Tap on the Mistake

– Task 1: Tap on the Mistake –

After everyone has posted their responses you can reveal student answers without showing who is correct (deselect reveal answer).

Toggle Off Display Work

– Toggle Off Display Work –

Your student work would look something like this:

Tap on the Mistake Student Responses

- Heat Map of Student Responses -

This would be a great chance for a little small group discussion. Students can talk about why they chose what they did, if they think there is another correct answer, if they want to change their answer and what they think their peers who answered differently were thinking. To help facilitate this, the next task is the same as task 1 but with discussion questions in the scratch pad. After students are done discussing their responses you can have them try the task again. If everyone aced task 1 you can always skip task 2.

These tap an image, error detection problems are great for working on the Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice, particularly:

Students have the opportunity to look for errors and make arguments for why something might be an error. They also can argue why someone’s choice was or was not correct.

This practice of writing down a solution to a problem with errors, taking a picture and making it into a poll is generalizable to pretty much any subject in math or even other subjects. I prefer having multiple mistakes since they tend to lead to better discussions but examples with single mistakes work well too.

This poll shows us how we can use tap an image tasks to get students reflecting on their procedures for solving a problem.

Get started by previewing the poll right now, or login to wootmath.com and search for Tap an Image Error Identification in the Shared Gallery.

Preview the Quiz

Visit our page on Formative Assessment for more information on implementing these strategies in your classroom.

Stay tuned for next week’s post!

How can I format my formative assessment?

In general, you can add formatting by using the html-like style attributes. That means that you’ll want to put html tags (the < and > symbols) around the words that you want to format. Just copy and paste the examples below to get started!

Bold
To make something bold, add:
<bold>this is now bold</bold>

Underline
To make something underlined, add:
<underline>this is now underlined</underline

Italics
To make something italicized, add:
<i>this is now italicized</i>

Center
This is the syntax for centering text:
<center>this is now centered</center>

Code
There is also a syntax to show computer code:
<code>this is code</code>

Line
To make a horizontal line:
<hr>

Here is an example which contains each of the examples mentioned above. When you create the formative assessment, simply add the desired format text around the text string as shown:

Examples:

 

And here is the resulting text with the set format:

 

You can also add a variety of colors, using the following tags:

Red text:
<red>Red text here.</red>

Orange text:
<orange>Orange text here.</orange>

Yellow text:
<yellow> Yellow text here.</yellow>

Green text:
<green>Green text here.</green>

Blue text:
<blue>Blue text here.</blue>

Purple text:
<purple> Purple text here.</purple>

Gray text:
<gray>Gray text here.</gray>

Black text:
<black>Black text here.</black>

Brown text:
<brown>Brown text here.</brown>

Pink text:
<pink>Pink text here.</pink>

Additional formatting options are also available to help you write mathematical notation, which are documented in the Math Editor Guide. And for additional control of your layout, you can also use a subset of the LaTex typesetting system.

What are some ways to challenge my students using Woot Math?

Adaptive Learning covers key material around rational numbers with grade-aligned standards from grade 3 to grade 7. Students work independently through a personalized progression of levels that adapts based on their performance. You can learn more about this National Science Foundation funded, research-backed learning tool for your classroom here.

For quality implementation, we generally recommend students strive for 2 stars on all levels/books in Adaptive Learning. We do have some teachers that require 3 stars for all levels/books, although this can be a difficult for some students due to the bonus and more challenging questions sometimes presented. However, for students that are seeking more of a challenge, three stars on all levels is certainly a good goal to strive for! (Follow these links to learn more about the implementation guidelines for grades 3-5 and 6+.)

Woot Math’s educators are also continually creating high-quality rich tasks (rich tasks are items that we consider more than just a quiz or a homework). Search for #richtasks or #IllustrativeMathematics to see a sampling of these rich tasks! You can also filter by grade or topic to quickly find something in alignment with your current needs. Then you can either assign your whole class, or individual students, these questions to work on.

Search for Rich Tasks
Another idea is to group students that are doing very well together, and have them work to create their own tasks similar to what they’ve run with the #richtasks or #IllustrativeMathematics mentioned above. In this case, we recommend having them start with paper and pencil to write out their questions and ideas, and then submit them to you for feedback. You could also have them do a “final project” which would be to create (with your the help, since they will need access to a teacher account to create content) a poll that they could run with the class! (For more information on how to create your own quizzes or tasks, see here.)
 

Two Digit Addition and Subtraction

Task 1

It’s great to start a poll with a fun question, something that everyone gets right or that makes us all feel good. For this poll, we start with a check-in about how students are feeling. The problem asks to “Tap the bird that best describes how you feel”. There is no right or wrong answer so students have the opportunity to express themselves. Not only does Woot Math Polls help you learn about what your students know, it also lets you learn how they feel and build a positive classroom culture… Woot!

Task 2

Task 2 asks students to add 68 to 35 and to show their work. Students can use the scratchpad to show their reasoning. Note how the calculator tool is not available for this task (all of the scratchpad tools can be enabled or disabled under “Scratchpad Settings” for any given task).

– Task 2 Prompt –

After students submit responses, I recommend you go over a few of them. Students may be using different strategies that are worth pointing out. Regardless it is good to validate their thinking and review how the 1s, 10s, and 100s places are apparent in each step.

Task 3

Task 3 is quite similar to task 2 but involves subtraction. In reviewing student work, this is a great opportunity to review how you are breaking groups of 10 into 10 1s, which will help your students develop number sense beyond the algorithms necessary for getting the right answer. We have the following response bookmarked, called “tens and ones”, to help review that concept.

– Task 3 Work Shown –

Get started by previewing the poll right now, or login to wootmath.com and search for Two Digit Addition and Subtraction in the Shared Gallery.

Visit our page on Formative Assessment for more information on implementing these strategies in your classroom.Task

New Save and Share Feature

Sometimes a small change can have a disproportionately large effect. In chaos theory this is called the butterfly effect (also a film with Ashton Kutcher that you probably forgot about until now). Here at Woot Math, we call it Save and Share. That’s right, a new feature was released that lets you copy any poll to your Woot Math account, even if it has not been approved by us yet. All you need is the link.

Imagine this scenario:
You’re on Twitter and notice someone made and shared a Woot Math warm-up activity that would be perfect for your class tomorrow, if only you could make a few changes first. Just there’s no time to wait, since class is tomorrow! (Woot Math screens all published polls for accuracy and appropriateness, you’re welcome!). Now, you can copy any poll that you have a link to preview, just click the save and share button in the upper right.

– Question 1 – Preview to get to Save and Share –

Then, click the save button and it will be copied into your Woot Math account. If you’re not logged in, a pop-up will prompt you to do so. Now the warm up is yours so you can make any changes you want (well, technically, it is an identical copy of it is yours, but let’s not split hairs).

This feature, although seemingly small, has lots of great applications. It allows you to collaborate on designing assessments with your department. The feature came as a request from one of our teacher partners, Rebekah Cook at Skyline High School, who was writing assessments with her math department colleagues and wanted to be able to share assessments quickly without waiting on them going public. Now she can make edits to Woot Math quizzes that her colleagues wrote, customizing them to her class. Thanks Rebekah for the great suggestion!

You can also now send assessments to your colleagues to re-align the content. If they’re a little behind or ahead of you in a unit they can add or remove problems. It also lets you edit a poll that has not yet been published. You can add language supports, hints or bonus problems to the scratchpad if you think students need more support/challenge.

We’d love to hear how you’re using the Save & Share button, leave a comment below or tweet @WootMath.

For more information on implementing Woot Math in your classroom, visit our page on Formative Assessment.

How do I create a formative assessment or poll?

Create Content Dialog

How do I create a formative assessment or poll?

You can create quizzes, homework, warmups, exit tickets, polls, and more with Woot Math's formative assessment platform. All for free.

Getting Started

To get started, you’ll just need a Woot Math account. (Sign up for free  if you don’t yet have one, otherwise, login to the teacher dashboard to get started.) Click on the Content tab, and then click Create Content to get started making your own formative assessments.
Content Tab

What Are You Making Today?

The first thing you are asked to specify is the type of content you want to create. Currently, Woot Math supports:

  • Warmup
  • Classwork/Homework
  • Quiz
  • Exit Ticket
Create Content Dialog
After you select your type, add in a title, description and specify the standards related to the formative assessment. An example follows:
Sample title information

Adding Tasks

The next step is to add one or more questions. You can created your own questions by using the Add a Task button, or you can import a task from either other formative assessments you’ve created, or from the shared gallery others have created, by pressing the Import a Task button.

There are currently ten types of tasks that you can add to your formative assessments. They are shown below:

The various task types are defined in the Woot Math user guide under Create Content

Sharing Your Content

After you have created your content, you can optionally share it with other teachers by pressing Public, share with the community.

Dialog to Share Content Publicly
Get started creating your own today!

How to preview an assignment?

There are a couple of ways to preview an assignment before you assign it to your students. For any of the formative assessment assignments (warmups, exit tickets, quizes, homework, etc), you can simply hover over the assignment to get the options for that assignment. To preview a formative assessment assignment, simply press the Preview, as shown here:

The Preview mode will allow you to play the assignment just like a student. The preview includes full access to the student scratchpad, correct/incorrect answer reporting, and much more.

To make a formative assessment assignment, simply pick either Teacher-Led or Self-Paced to send the assignment to your students.

For any of the Adaptive Learning assignments, you can play an assignment by assigning it to yourself (learn how to make yourself an account here). Note that because it is adaptive in nature, your experience will not be exactly the same as your students’.

Weekly Math Poll – Back to School

While we created this activity for the math classroom, it can easily be adapted for any subject. In fact, the first four of six tasks contain no math. To customize this activity to meet your individual classroom needs, select “copy” and edit away in your account!

Back to School Quiz
– Back to School Quiz –

The first task has a throwback to some math history with the ancient calculator, an abacus. Obviously, students no longer need to lug these to class. We hope some students may select the other correct answer that they don’t need “Snapchat Skills” for school. Feel free to customize for your specific classroom requirements (laptop/tablet, textbook, binder, etc.)

Task #1
– Task #1 –

The scratchpad is a helpful tool for hints, bonus problems and language supports. This task has a definition of an abacus in case that is a new word for your students. Adding support in the scratchpad can help prevent language from being a barrier to students’ math success.

Task 1 Using the Scratchpad for Language Support
– Task #1 Using the Scratchpad for Language Support –

Task 2 is a two-for-one (a twofer!) with students reflecting on important strategies for school success and practicing productive turn-and-talk with a partner. After students have talked for a few minutes they can enter their ideas in the short answer box.

Task 3 lets them practice the tap on their favorite strategy for school success. It is fun and will result in some lively discussion if you take some time to discuss the resulting heat map of student responses with the entire class!

– Task #3 –

Task 4 is like that game two truths and a lie, except there are two lies and only one truth. Here at Woot Math, we encourage students to show their work (so A is not true) and we sometimes have tips and hints in the scratchpad (so B is not true). We also believe in second chances and let students go back and change their submission as long as the teacher hasn’t revealed the answer yet (so C is true).

Task 4 is like that game two truths and a lie, except there are two lies and only one truth. Here at Woot Math, we encourage students to show their work (so A is not true) and we sometimes have tips and hints in the scratchpad (so B is not true). We also believe in second chances and let students go back and change their submission as long as the teacher hasn’t revealed the answer yet (so C is true).

Task #4
– Task #4 –

Ideally students read option B and look to the scratchpad to see if there are any helpful tips. The hint suggests they try submitting and then changing their answer to test if C is the correct answer. If all goes well, your students will be forming hypotheses, gathering data and drawing conclusions. Hey wait a minute! This is starting to sound more like science class than math.

Task 5 gives them a math problem to compute an area from a length and a width. This task has them practicing how to use the calculator tool in the scratchpad to show their work. Note that when you create activity like this one, you can control which scratchpad tools your students have access to by going to Scratchpad Settings. You can learn more about customizing student tasks here.

Task #5 Scratchpad Settings
– Task #5 Scratchpad Settings –

This is also a good reminder for them that units matter and sometimes a problem will have two blanks, one for the number and one for the unit. The correct answer for the units here is “square feet” but Woot Math also accepts “feet squared” “ft^2” and “sq feet”. Multiple correct answers are separated by a semi-colon (AKA winky face ;). This problem also allows for up to 1 typo. Notice how the bonus problem asks them to make a typo deliberately to see if they still get it right. Having students understand how Woot Math evaluates their work can be helpful.

The final task has them practice showing their work in the scratchpad. The example given demonstrates one of many methods for solving the problem. The three numbers are broken down into the 100s, 10s and 1s, grouped and then added. Encourage your students to try an alternate strategy.

Task #5 Expressing Your Work on the Scratchpad
– Task #5 Expressing Your Work on the Scratchpad –

This activity is a fun and engaging start to the Fall. We hope you enjoy it, and we wish you and your students a terrific new school year!

Get started by previewing the poll right now, or login to wootmath.com and search for Back to School in the Shared Gallery.

Visit our page on Formative Assessment for more information on implementing these strategies in your classroom.