Math Teaching Strategies Archives

February 21, 2019March 30, 2022

How to Use Woot Math to Prep Students for PARCC and CMAS

Of all topics in mathematics, students struggle the most with making sense of fractions and operating with them flexibly. Woot Math’s Adaptive Learning Content provides instructional (grades 3-7) and remediation support to help students conceptually understand and master key mathematics ideas. Students learn how to make connections among the various representations of rational numbers and use this thinking to solve problems involving fractions, decimals, rates, ratios, proportional thinking, as well as operations involving integers.

PRACTICE + VISIBILITY INTO STUDENT WORK

Woot Math provides full practice tests that are aligned to PARCC and CMAS. These interactive modules are designed to mimic the testing environments students will experience. If you want to use this resource as a practice exam, we recommend assigning it as self-paced so you can formatively assess your students’ knowledge.

Click below to demo a practice test as a student. From Woot Math’s gallery of content, search for PARCC and CMAS to view a complete list of modules available.

Alternatively, you can use this content in a teacher-led mode to monitor the strategies used by all of your students and use this information to facilitate a classroom discussion. If you want to make changes or additions to the tasks, Woot Math makes it easy for teachers to edit the content directly.

These tools are available on Woot Math at no cost, and are designed to support authentic formative assessment and give visibility into student’s understanding.

For an overview on the positive impact that authentic formative assessment has on student learning, see this article by Dr. David C. Webb, an Associate Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Executive Director of the Freudenthal Institute USA.

ADAPTIVE PREP + FOUNDATION MATH SKILLS

For your elementary and middle school students who struggle with fractions, rational numbers and rate and proportion, Woot Math’s adaptive learning modules can help increase their confidence, improve conceptual understanding, and procedural fluency.

Click on the Number Line Demo to experience a sample adaptive unit about number lines as a student.

To learn more about how Woot Math is being effectively used in the classroom, here are two helpful guest posts that were written by teachers:

RESEARCH & EFFICACY

Woot Math is a research-backed platform; our research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This funding has enabled us to develop a program that has demonstrated efficacy and effectiveness in many different schools from across the country, including schools in Colorado. Our research and development work has resulted in a product that is proven to help students develop confidence and fluency with rational numbers.

In addition to our own research, Woot Math leverages decades of research and synthesis about how students learn mathematics and how certain topics (like rational numbers) might best be taught. We work closely with the Rational Number Project (a multi-university, 30+ year effort that has thoroughly studied how students might best learn rational numbers), other leading researchers, and a bevy of classroom teachers. Our tools help to bring the best available practices to every classroom and do so with a unique focus on hands-on modeling.

Questions? Comments? We would value hearing from you.

February 11, 2019September 11, 2019

How to Use Woot Math to Help with Final Preparation

Students are constantly struggling with study skills, especially in 9th grade as we start to think about end of year testing. It is difficult to “know where to start,” which is fair, considering there is a lot of material to cover! They are overwhelmed by the information and are still learning how to manage their time.

I was hoping to relieve some of this stress by creating personalized study plans for each student. I know, I know, a lot of you are rolling your eyes thinking, “How will I have time to do this?!” Using Woot Math and a quick worksheet, I was able to make study plans for all three sections of Algebra 1, on the spot, during a 45 minute class period. I know, it is very hard to believe.

In my Algebra 1 classroom, I start preparation by gauging students knowledge. What do my students need to know to be successful? Where are they struggling? What have they mastered? I answer all of these questions with a pre-test using Woot Math! If you want to check it out right away, click the link below. Continue reading to see how I use the poll.

My final is separated into four distinctive units: number patterns, graphing, writing equations, and systems of equations. I took five key questions from each unit and created a set of twenty questions. In class, I had all of the students work on the poll using the “self-pace” feature with automatic feedback turned on. You can see my student’s results below.

Once students have completed their poll, they sit with me and we analyze their results using the results page shown above. I quickly count how many they got correct out of the five questions per unit and calculate their scores. Then, working together with me we create their own personalized study plan. I made this very quickly using a word processor.

I have used study plans in the past and students respond very well to them, and they continually request them. Parents are thankful that their students have a plan of attack to be successful during finals. Special education teachers are grateful for the guidance, not only for the students but for themselves! This allows students to clearly understand where their skills are lacking and where they shine. Also, meeting with students one-on-one to check in before finals is a great way to instill confidence in your students.

This structure knows no limits! Whether you are teaching math, history, science, you could use this as a tool for your classroom! You can add reflective questions to the study plans to encourage students to think about their goals and not just memorize formulas.

How do you prepare your students for finals? Do you let them run free and learn study skills on their own? Or do you have an awesome game that you play? Whatever it is, we at Woot Math would love to hear about it! Good luck studying! Woot! Woot!

About Diana:
Diana Rapp is a full-time math teacher at Fairview High School. She has been a mathematics teacher for two years. Growing up, Diana struggled in mathematics. She learned quickly at a young age that she would have to work hard and productively struggle constantly in order to be successful. Along her journey as a student she was lucky enough to have incredible teachers and tutors that gave her the tools to succeed and instill confidence in herself. Diana became a teacher because she believes she can be that mentor for her struggling students. Diana has a BA in Mathematics and is currently working on her Masters in Mathematics Education Curriculum and Instruction.

High School Mathematics, Math Teaching Strategies, Middle School Mathematics, Test Prep, Weekly Math Poll

Diana Rapp

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December 11, 2018

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.

December 11, 2018December 11, 2018

Interactive Professional Development

Woot Math provides free interactive PD, which will walk you through a number of steps as you get started using Woot Math in your classroom. The interactive design lets you choose those areas you want to learn more about, and skip those that you are already comfortable with. Topics include:

Setup your class(es)
Introduction to Woot Math (Part #1)
Woot Math Demo (both teacher and student experience)
Adaptive Learning deep-dive for your classroom
Best practices for high-quality implementation
How to make assignments
How to run a teacher-led formative assessment
How to leverage grouping in your classroom
Learn about the digital scratchpad

To get started, click here.

December 7, 2018March 14, 2019

District Implementation of Woot Math

Customized Professional Development

As part of a district adoption, we can provide professional development for your staff. We recommend two 1-hour sessions of PD, spaced out about 6-8 weeks apart. Please contact us to learn more about what professional development can look like for your district.

Progress Charts

A variety of district-level reports are provided, including an aggregate view of use, problems solved, percent correct, and more. In addition, detailed reports are available to indicate teacher use, classroom use, and student use.

Teacher Certificates

Teachers are provided with fun certificates to share with the students as they progress through the Woot Math Adaptive Learning content. These certificates are a great way to celebrating students success!

Teacher Certificates

Sample parent letters are provided for your teachers to introduce Woot Math at home.

December 7, 2018December 7, 2018

High-Fidelity Implementation of Woot Math

Woot Math is used by a variety of classroom teachers, across all grades in K-12. While classroom implementations vary based on the specific teacher, school, or district objectives, here are some general best practices that we recommend for using Woot Math.

Adaptive Learning

For any teacher with students that struggle with rational numbers, or any student in grades 3-7, we recommend utilizing the included Adaptive Learning lessons. These lessons provide students with the support that they need to master the most challenging rational number topics, and will help set them up to succeed as they enter into Algebra and beyond.

The Adaptive Learning sequence has been hand-crafted to maximize student performance with leading mathematics education researchers. And, it has been proven to provide 2X in learning outcomes. The Adaptive Learning has funding from the National Science Foundation, and has been recognized as one of the top-three research-backed tools as reported by Digital Promise.

Grades 3-5 implementation

Grades 6-8 implementation

Formative Assessments

Formative Assessments can be a key differentiator for the math classroom. Learn more about how to run successful formative assessments for your classroom here.

August 24, 2018September 13, 2018

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!

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.)

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 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 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).

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.

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.

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.

July 2, 2018September 13, 2018

Weekly Math Poll – 4th of July

We start the poll with a basic American history question asking which document was signed on the 4th of July, 1776. We expect nearly all your students will know the answer, regardless it is a great reminder of what we celebrate on this fine day.

Next, we move on to some math about a problem that that many of us encounter every year when planning a BBQ. The number of buns and the number of hot dogs just don’t match! We ask students to find the least common multiple of 6 and 8 to see just how big a party they would need to throw to have a perfect match.

Practicing problems with least common multiples…check. Thinking about food waste and business marketing… check. For added fun, ask your students to draw a picture to justify their reasoning or solve the problem in two or three different ways.

The scratchpad is also a great place to put reminders or fun facts relating to the problem.

The rest of this poll is aligned to Algebra I standards on modeling linear inequalities, graphing them and transforming them.

Tasks 3 and 4 have students imagine they are throwing a mini-firework show for their school and need to stay within the constraints of their budget and time expectations. If they get the math right, they will find that they do not have enough money to make the show long enough. If this were a real situation, these types of analysis would be helpful in arguing for a larger budget, lower permit costs or shorter time requirements.

Task 5 asks them to identify which graph is a solution to the inequality. I like making tasks like this with screenshots of actual graphs merged into one image for a tap-an-image multiple choice. The visual display of the heatmap can lead to some productive discussions in the classroom, especially if you have the “show answer” button turned off. If you do, the projected results will be a heatmap of student responses. This is a great time for a whole class or small group discussion (try the automatic grouping feature) about the task. If you want, you can create a copy of this task and then run it again after the discussion to see if everyone converges on the correct answer. Get started by previewing the poll right now, or login to wootmath.com and search for 4th of July in the Shared Gallery.

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

June 1, 2018September 13, 2018

Weekly Math Poll – NBA Finals

This poll covers mean, median and interquartile range. These are statistics concepts that show up in Algebra I and sometimes earlier. You could use it as a fun review/warm-up. Practicing questions that involve finding data in charts is always good SAT/ACT review. Alternately, it would be a great exit ticket for a day where you teach students about interquartile range. Also, feel free to copy it to your dashboard and modify the questions to better fit what your students are currently covering. Either way it is a great opportunity to tie in current events and basketball into math. Who knows, you may end up observing your students making data-driven arguments for or against one of the teams.

After Task 1, we dive in to the math. The next two questions involve some review of mean and median but the real challenge is in identifying the correct data to use. Students often know how to compute mean and median, especially when the data is presented clearly in the problem. Finding it in the table adds an extra challenge but also makes it more relevant and transferable to applying statistical analysis to authentic, real-world data.

Also, when you are reviewing student data from this poll, you can quickly see which students used the wrong data by using the custom legend. If they computed the mean correctly but for the wrong score (points scored by the Warriors or against the Rockets) they will be color coded in purple. If they mixed up mean and median but were otherwise correct, they will be coded in blue.

We also added a custom legend for tasks 3 and 4, we recommend you check them out before running the poll with your student.

For all the questions, we give you real data that was current up until the start of the 2018 finals. Feel free to linger on one of these questions and ask your students what they notice.

You can pause here and ask your students,

“Do you see a correlation between points scored by LeBron and if his team won or lost?”

“Does he tend to score more or less points when other statistics (rebounds, assists…) go up?”

You can also pause after the next question to ask them about how the points are distributed within a team.

After students do the analysis of the top 7 highest scoring players they have even more useful information. You can ask them, how do the distributions of the two teams compare? What are the outliers in the data? Hopefully your students use data and their statistics (mean, median, interquartile range) in their responses. If you are covering standard deviation, this problem’s prompt and correct answer can be quickly changed once in your account. Interestingly, the teams have very similar standard deviations when it comes to the top 7 point scorers. Whether you’re rooting for the Cavs or the Warriors, this poll will let your students compute statistics from real data that they can use to support their favorite (or talk trash about their rival). Get started by previewing the poll right now, or login to wootmath.com and search for NBA Playoffs in the Shared Gallery.

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

Stay tuned for next week’s poll!

April 25, 2018March 30, 2022

Woot Math in a 4th Grade Classroom

– Digital Manipulatives –

Not having to search for a half, third, and sixth piece (that accidentally got knocked on the ground and now is under someone’s shoes, or what color was the twelves piece?!) To model a problem quickly and efficiently for a learner still at the concrete level of fractions is a teacher’s dream come true!

Woot Math provides an opportunity for students to have access to manipulatives and models of all sizes and types (fraction bars and circles are available to students) while working on problems that cover all grade level standards. This is exactly what I have always wanted to be able to provide for my students. The question types are varied with kid friendly fonts, graphics, and animations to keep students interested peeked. Additionally, the writing tool is fantastic for showing how to make groups, separate, divide, and give meaning to word problems – every kids’ nemesis. Woot Math has built in positive reinforcements and rewards to keep students engaged while offering rigorous common core aligned curriculum. Students are presented with problems that mirror our state test and their confidence is built as they see themselves as experts to help classmates working on similar question types.

– Student engagement includes badges and stars –

Like most classrooms across the nation, my class is composed of students performing multiple grade levels above and multiple grade levels below in math a well as other subjects. Woot Math is a perfect match for every student in our class. Students with IEPs are able to watch the instructional videos and receive curriculum starting with third grade standards. Students who are advanced in math can progress on their own above our grade level and continue to learn fractions and decimals into sixth grade level.

We use Woot Math in class for 15 to 30 minutes a day while we are working in the fractions domain. I assign each student to start at the beginning of the program, which is third grade standards. As a fourth-grade teacher it is a dream for me to have no assumptions of what the students remember from last year. Every child is able to work through last year‘s fractions and decimals standards. (You can find a useful example of Woot Math problems on their Equivalent Fractions page.)

Woot Math gives students the opportunity for additional practice if they make mistakes, so mastery is the focus of each assignment. I love that Woot Math ensures that each student is able to be successful before moving on. The focus is on mastery, not on getting the assignment completed as fast as possible. If students rush through with careless errors they are given more opportunities to try those problems again. Students learn that focus and accuracy are more important than speed. The immediate feedback students receive let’s them know right away if they are understanding the standards or not.

– Completed Book Award –

Each week on Monday I set a goal for students to complete one or two “books” by Friday. I love that the curriculum is broken down into small parts so students are celebrated frequently and receive recognition for their hard work. Everyone feels like a winner with Woot Math. Kids love receiving a new highlight color and being awarded their stars at the end of a section. I reinforce to my class not to guess and to rewatch the video that comes at the beginning of the section which models, describes, and outlines exactly how to complete the work.

The Mastery by Books report is a quick way for me to scan who has completed which books and to what degree of mastery. The color-coded grid is simple, straightforward, and a breeze to use for the busy teacher with multiple subjects to teach a day. Being able to see 32 students work on individualized assignments that have been personalized to meet their needs is so rewarding. Every student is learning the next thing they need to know. That’s the power of Woot Math! Woot!

– Sample Report –

If you haven’t already, sign up for your free today!

About Christi:
Christi Tucker is a 4th grade teacher with her masters degree in curriculum and instruction. She has ten years of experience in preschool through 8th grade. Christi loves the Southern California sunshine, color-changing sheep on Minecraft, kayaking in the bay, and taking on a challenge to learn something new. Embracing change, she loves to integrate technology into learning and utilizing it to make learning an adventure everyday.

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Tag: Math Teaching Strategies

How to Use Woot Math to Prep Students for PARCC and CMAS

PRACTICE + VISIBILITY INTO STUDENT WORK

ADAPTIVE PREP + FOUNDATION MATH SKILLS

RESEARCH & EFFICACY

How to Use Woot Math to Help with Final Preparation