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

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December 4, 2018September 13, 2019

Tap an Image Error Identification Weekly Woot

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 –

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

– Toggle Off Display Work –

Your student work would look something like this:

- 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:

CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP3 Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
CCSS.MATH.PRACTICE.MP6 Attend to precision.

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!

algebra, discourse, error identification, Formative Assessment, MP3, MP6, Weekly Math Poll

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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 14, 2018September 12, 2018

Weekly Math Poll – Systems of Inequality

Task #1
The context of the problem is a business that makes hats, both by machine and by hand. In the first problem, students need to model an inequality between their budget, $2000, and the cost of making each type of hat. Often students don’t know where to start with word problems, so this task provides some supports in the scratchpad. If you think your students don’t need the extra support, feel free to remove it by clicking on scratchpad settings after you have copied the task into your account.

Task #2
The next problem is another opportunity for them to model an inequality from a word problem. Some students may be able to intuitively see that if over 50% are made by hand then y>x. Others will need some help, so the scratchpad has some steps to get them working. When reviewing the problem with the class, you can always use this pre-saved bookmark called “Great Work!” (Note: you can access bookmarks by clicking on the “Bookmarks” tab when viewing results.)

Notice how the scratchpad helped the student get started with writing down what they know, then putting it together to solve the problem. If students write the final answer as y/(y+x)>0.5 (or any variation of it) they will get it right, make sure you go over that this is the same as y>x before the next problem.

Task #3
This is a great example of how you can spice up a multiple choice question. There is a pre-made graph and a blank table on the scratchpad to help them connect different representations of y>x.

Task #4
This problem has the inequality from task 3 on the scratchpad. The major advantage of this is even if your students got it wrong in task 3, they won’t be building off a mistake moving forward. If you are running a teacher led poll, they won’t be able to look ahead. This task is harder than the last one, remember to remind them to use a table or plot some points. If you want, you can always add hints on the scratchpad by going to “Scratchpad Setting” when editing the task.

The final problem gives them practice with testing points in a system of inequalities while remembering the parameters of the original problem. Students are given a graph of the system of inequalities to help them draw connections between different representations. Remind them as they work that they can draw on the graph (using the scratchpad) to plot points and see which of the shaded regions they are in.

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

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

March 30, 2018September 12, 2018

Weekly Math Poll – Woot Math Can Do That?!

Even if you remember a childhood song for all fifty states, can you locate them all on a map? Mr. Ward created fifty different “tap” tasks to help students identify the locations of all fifty states. The “tap” feature is limitless, interactive and fun, and students love clicking on the correct answer and seeing their classmates answers appear as well.

How to make a “tap” question
This poll uses the “Tap an Image” task type. To create this one, Mr. Ward uploaded an image of the US showing all 50 states. Then he used the pencil to color in the correct area (shown in green. Note that you can also use the eraser to clean up any mistakes or uneven lines.)

What Students See
This is what the students see on their devices. Students catch onto the “tap” function extremely quickly. And it works great on tablets, smartphones and computers! In this case, you could even do it as a classroom activity by projecting it on your smartboard. On a computer, students will use the mouse to “tap” and then press submit. And on a tablet or smartphone, students just physically “tap” with their finger and press submit.

Showing the Results
Once everyone has submitted their answer, you can press “Show Results” to display the classroom results. You can choose to display the results in two ways.

First, you can show all of the student responses, but choose to hide the correct and incorrect answers. To hide the results, just uncheck the “Reveal Answer” button (located on the bottom right of the screen). The blue dots indicate the student responses – now let the great group discussions begin!

To display the correct and incorrect answers, click on the “Reveal Answer” button. The green dots mean “correct” and red dots mean “incorrect.” In this case, two students picked the states next to Alabama, common mistake!

As the teacher, how and when you share the results with the class is up to you. In the projected view, student names are not displayed, so everyone in the class can comfortably participate in the conversation without feeling the pressure to get the “correct answer”. Offline, you can analyze the results and see individual student responses (by question, by student, etc).

Calling all teachers of history, language arts, science, computer science, art history and many more! We would love to see how you utilize Woot Math in your classroom! (Note that there are already lots of Physics and Computer Science questions also in Woot Math. Check out the gallery for lots more examples.) Show us your best polls with your most engaging tasks! We are all eyes and ears! Thanks for the idea Mr. Ward.

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

March 16, 2018September 11, 2018

Weekly Math Poll – Fun with Factoring for Middle School

This Woot Math Poll was created by Marilyn. Thanks for sharing! To preview these excellent questions (there are 15 in total), run the poll now:

We’ve highlighed just a few fun questions. How would your students do on these?

Sample Task #1
This question asks the student to tap on any of the prime numbers shown below. You can use the Tap an Image task to make interactive tasks such as this – just upload any image and then color in the correct answer(s).

Sample Task #2
This problem asks students to find a square number between 30 and 50. Students can use the scratchpad and the expression editor to show their work. A fun follow-up question – how many square numbers are there between 30 and 50!

Sample Task #3
This question is a great review of mathematical vocabulary.

Modify for Your Classroom

You can use this poll as a warm up, quiz, or even homework. Or, you can copy and then modify it to meet your needs. There are lots of excellent ideas to leverage for your classroom. With Woot Math, all of the polls are completely free and great Open Educational Resources (OER).

Get started by previewing the poll right now, or login to wootmath.com and search for Prime Time Investigation 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!

March 14, 2018September 11, 2018

Happy Pi Day 3.14 – Quizzes & Resources

Pi Day celebrates the mathematical constant (π), as March 14 can also be expressed as 3.14, the first three digits of pi. Pi is the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter, which is a constant. That is – for any size circle, the ratio is the same (π).

The first large-scale celebration of Pi Day was organized by Larry Shaw at the San Francisco Exploratorium, where Shaw worked as a physicist. Then in March 2009, Pi Day became a national holiday in the United States. And a fun note? March 14th is also Albert Einstein’s birthday. Don’t worry, unlike Pi, this history lesson won’t go on forever. Onto the math!

Use these two warm-ups or exit tickets
for fun with square roots (and of course Pi):

These two warm-ups can be used for a quick check
of student understanding with trigonometric expressions:

And this is a great quiz for gauging
student understanding of arc length and sector area:

You can run any of these as a warm-up, quiz or even assign for homework. You can also copy and modify the questions and make them your own. There are lots of excellent ideas to leverage for your classroom. With Woot Math, all of the polls are completely free and a great Open Educational Resources (OER).

Get started by clicking on any of the polls now to preview them, or login to wootmath.com and search by name. You can also click on the categories in the Shared Gallery – for example– Geometry, Trigonometry, to find more great resources for your classroom. And who knows, you might also have fun with pie charts, or even pumpkin pie.

January 26, 2018September 13, 2019

Weekly Math Poll – Algebra I Review

This week's math poll asks students to convert between forms of linear equations and explain their preferred strategy for finding a line through two points or a slope and a point.

Task #1

This task has students convert the given equation into standard form. Encourage your students to use the scratchpad to show their thinking!

Task #2

The next task has students convert the given equation into slope intercept form. Encourage them to use the expression editor, which makes it easy to work with and manipulate equations.

Task #3

In the third task, students are asked to determine which equation they would use to find a line through the points (-5, -4) and (0,8). In this case students can choose from more than one answer – hence it is important to encourage them to show their work and strategy when solving the problem.

Task #4

In the fourth task, students are asked to find a line with a slope of 5 through the point (0,8). Again, multiple answers are possible – so students should explain their work.

We encourage you to modify this task and content to align it with similar content. You can copy the poll and modify or delete any task and also make new ones. Please reach out with any questions or comments, we’re here to support you!

Get started by previewing the poll right now, or login to wootmath.com and search for the Algebra I Review poll 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!

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How to Use Woot Math to Help with Final Preparation