Ep 52. Cultivating Creativity in the Math Classroom

Johanna Kuiper 0:00
I want you to think back to the last time you saw a math class in a movie or TV show. Do you recall how math was depicted? Typically, it’s as a boring direct instruction lesson full of algorithms. But anyone who knows who truly knows math knows how freaking cool it is. So in today’s episode, I’m going to be sharing with you some tips on how to bring creativity to the math classroom. So students stopped seeing it as a boring, direct instruction type class, and instead, someplace that they can have fun. Let’s get started. Welcome to solving for the undefined podcast. I’m your host, Johanna, founder of Miss Kuiper’s Classroom, the place that equips teachers and creating a healthy math classroom where students can thrive, no matter their academic abilities. But it’s not always about the numbers. And that’s why I’m here, bringing you the formulas to solve your problems, math and otherwise, plus strategies on cultivating that necessary math mindset.

Johanna Kuiper 1:04
And that’s what you can count on. Hello, hello. Welcome to a brand new episode. And I know I say I’m excited about most episodes, because truly I am, this one holds a special place in my heart because bringing creativity or cultivating creativity in the math classroom is something that I’m truly passionate about. Because when we bring creativity into my classroom, we are hooking in students, and we are getting that engagement that’s gonna lead to deeper academic thinking, and hopefully lead them into loving math. So the first of four ways we can bring creativity to the math classroom is in our warmups, I always like to bring the idea of new before old in the math classroom. So when students get into class, the first thing that we are going to do is something new to them, it’s not going to be reviewing old material, like what we learned yesterday or the past unit, this is the time to hook our students in and engage them. Because when we can get that initial engagement, it’s gonna provide exponential mathy term, provide exponential benefits to them, and us as teachers for the rest of the class period. Back in episode 44, I talked about using critical thinking tasks as warm ups and I gave a lot of good examples there. Today, I’m going to be sharing one of the ones that I’ve done recently, that I’ve really enjoyed. And that’s called mystery letters. So the way it works, it is a four by four grid, full of letters A through G, and all of them represent a number. So a represents a certain number, B, C, D all represent a specific number, number, and none of them repeat, and on the outside to the right and bottom. So the row and columns add up to be a specific number. And again, the goal is for students to figure out what number each letter represents. So the way they can go about it is that very first row says a a and a, and that is supposed to equal eight. So they can kind of use that math skills without knowing that they’re truly using math skills to figure out what does he have to represent. And it represents to, and so then they can plug into for all of the A’s inside the four by four grid. And then the next one that they can do is one that says a C A C equals 16. And they can kind of use that to figure out that C has to be 16 minus four divided by two. And the process goes on until they have all the letters discovered. And the reason why I like this is because students are having a fun time, using math. And not all of them are understanding that they’re truly using math skills that they can apply to other places. They’re using their critical thinking skills, their collaboration, their deduction skills. They’re truly using a lot of things to complete this math puzzle. So if you’re interested in using these Google mystery squares, I think they’re called No, no. They’re called magic squares. And then a version of this is also magic triangle where each three size has to add up to a specific number. My students just did this today. These are fun ways to incorporate math, but still bringing a fun creative side to it. The second way to bring creativity into the math classroom is the way that you ask questions. I like to call this creative questioning. A lot of the times whenever you download a free worksheet off the internet or your textbook, it has very similar copy and paste type questions cookie cutter questions, if you will. It’s the same thing over and over again. And that’s boring snooze fest. So the way I like to do it is how can I read Word questions to still get the point across of our students getting this or are they not, but asking it in a creative way. So recently, I created a rotation of geometric rotations, scavenger hunt. And I use this idea on there. And when you’re doing a scavenger hunt students are doing, in my case, 12 different questions. And whenever they answer a question, it’s going to lead them to another one, because the answer is going to be on top of another card. And the scavenger hunt really isn’t the place that they can autograph, take a shape and rotate it 9180 or 270. So you have to really think out of the box of how can I ask questions that still let me know and help the students self reflect? Am I getting this or am I not? So here’s question A from the scavenger hunt. It’s a graph with a triangle ABC and the first quadrant. And the question is, what is B when rotated 90 degrees clockwise? So it’s something they have to do think about what is 90 degrees? What would a what is the coordinate point there? So that’s kind of the basic level kind of question. So here’s kind of the next tier of question. It’s a graph with a parallelogram in the third quadrant, D, F, G, how many degrees clockwise hasn’t been rotated, if f is at negative two, one. So students have to think about it. If it ended up here, how many degrees clockwise is that? It still shows whether or not they understand rotations, but it’s an out of the box type thinking. Here’s another question. And it’s kind of one of my favorites. It is a triangle in the first quadrant, it’s an H i j, triangle that’s facing to the right, so it’s pointing right. And the question is, what direction? Is the triangle pointing when rotated 180 degrees? Is the answer a mathy? Answer? No. But the process they have to do to get to that answer is math. I’ll read you two more, and then we’ll move on. Another type of problem I’ll do is a true or false. So this one says true or false when k is rotated 180 degrees, it’s at negative two, eight. And the last kind of creative question is, is this rotation correct. And it’ll listen to rotation. And then two images, does this rotation match up with this piece here is this 90 degrees clockwise. So students are having to do some analysis of the rotation doesn’t match up. All in all these types of questioning strategies are helping students think outside the box of rotate the shape, 90 degrees, rotate the shape, 180 degrees, because that gets boring. But when you introduce more types of questions that still provide the same math skills, it’s going to create a deeper understanding and engagement in the long run, that’s hopefully going to lead students to enjoy math class and love it. So moving into our third way of bringing creativity into the classroom is with multiple methods, teaching students how to do something, multiple different ways. And I’m going to use solving equations for this. And whenever I post about this on my Instagram, I get mixed reviews. But overall, from math teachers, I get kind of an intrigued vibe from them. Because some people don’t know that these methods exist. And you can teach something multiple ways, or like a specific type of multiple ways. Let me explain. So with solving equations, I teach a variety of different ways to do it, I usually start off with the idea of balance. And so you’re trying to balance things. And that comes with Hangar models. I have like a mobile and it has two sides. And usually one side has variables, and the other side has numbers. So for example, if I have an x tile and three unit towels on one side of the hanger, and six unit towels on the other, I know that both sides have to be six because it is balanced. So what does x have to be in order to be six on both sides, x has to be three, because three and three together make that six. The reason why I really enjoy these balancing problems is because it builds that conceptual foundation, because it’s tying in what they know about balance, whether it’s a seesaw, a barbell, or like those old timey type scales, and bringing it into the math world. And it helps build a foundation for inverse operations, which is another way that you can teach solving equations. Since this is kind of the standard way of teaching it. I’m not going to go into depth about inverse operations. So moving into another way of teaching solving equations is intuition method. And some teachers do not like this because sometimes students don’t necessarily show their work for it because they’re just thinking about it. So intuition method is a A term I made up for just looking at a problem and trying to figure out what x is what makes sense. And this works really well for like one step and two step equations. So if I have the problem, x plus four is nine, instead of going through the whole process of subtracting four on both sides, just looking at it, what plus four makes 955 plus four is nine. Therefore x has to represent five, boom, done, move on. And you can do this with two step equations as well. So if I have 2x plus five equals nine, what plus five equals nine, four, so 2x has to represent four. So two times what makes for 2x is two. So just thinking about that is going to help bring deeper understanding to what an equation means to then move on to other levels with like distributive property or combining like terms or even multi step equations, we want to bring true deep understanding to higher levels of math and thinking other ways to teach solving equations is also with algebra, tiles, or tape diagrams. These are just other visual ways and with algebra, tiles, tactile ways of solving for the value of the variable. And I like to teach a lot of these methods, I usually teach all of them. And this is kind of where that creativity piece comes in. Because students then get to choose how they solve equations from then on out, whatever method suits their fancy, they get to us. And I know some some of you just cringed at that because it is releasing control and order in the classroom, so to speak, because we are not just saying you have to solve it this way, and every paper is going to be the same. I want kids to be able to have the creativity and the understanding of how they think best to then use that method and work with it for the rest of the solving equations unit. And the using of multiple method applies to lots of other things. Solving equations was just the easiest one to convey verbally, whereas like transformations or slope is kind of a more visual type subject. So it’d be harder for me to convey that verbally.

Johanna Kuiper 12:24
I’m interrupting today’s episode to ask you a vital question. Do you have the tools in your classroom for student success, we’ll wonder no more because I have a way for you to check your work. My new guide seven math teacher must haves for student success as the top seven items you need in your classroom, from classroom staples to manipulatives that are often missed. This checklist will ensure that your students have a successful school year. Additionally, each item shows the best budget and splurge options. Download the seven math teacher must haves for student success after listening to today’s episode by going to miss kiper.com/guide. And the final fourth way to cultivate creativity in the math classroom is through a variety of activities. And this is probably the one that’s more easily implemented because you’re just taking what you always do and putting it into a different format. So you can do like games. Like I did the unfair game with my sixth period class today, and it was a blast, we had so much fun reviewing polynomials and exponent operations for their assessment tomorrow, it was a blast. If the unfair game is new to you, or you want to learn more, I have an episode on it, Episode 47, where that’s all we talk about is the unfair game, how to play, what I did what I did to make it better what I took out, etc. So gains are just one piece of how you can bring creativity into the math classroom. You can play Jeopardy, you could play lots of different things. Another one you could do is scavenger hunts. This is one that I really love because it involves movement as well. And it’s a great way to incorporate those creative style questions. So the rotation scavenger hunt that we did, or I have a hanger model scavenger hunt. There’s lots of different ways that you can use scavenger hunts to review material or do practice problems. Because you can be creative with it students are moving blood flow helps your brain get more oxygen, etc. Another one you can do is like partner self checking ones, meaning that students pair up and they each get a different half of the worksheet. So they have different questions, but they have the same answers. I find this works really well for solving equations or you can even do four transformations or exponent operations. There’s lots of different ways you can incorporate where two people are doing different problems, but it comes to the same answer. And because it’s self checking, it allows students to reflect on it and kind of have that debate and error analysis as well. Another one you could do is we talked about it in last episode with Brooklyn, that 100 chart where students can mark off numbers as they’re getting questions correct. And that’s a great way to bring choice and creativity to students because they get to choose what number they marked off. And I have a funny story that goes with this too, because I did this last week, I think, or maybe the week before. And I usually have a ton of students who mark off the number 69. And finally, it came up on the random number generator. And I only had one student who marked it off, just one. And I was like, mind blown, because so many kids usually choose the number 69. So they lost out that one time. Another way that you can provide creativity is through Google Sheets activities. There are so many ways to be creative with Google Sheets. And I love them one because it provides a lot of choice for students, but it also allows for self checking. So students are getting immediate feedback on whether they’re correct or not, with the answer that they provide. So some of my favorites that I have are a picture reveal, but then it’s all jumbled up, and students have to put it in order. So it’s kind of built in a fast finish your activity at the end, or an ugly sweater competition where students are having to create an ugly sweater, and they’re getting access to more and more features of it as they’re answering questions correctly. Another one is like a self checking partner game. So let’s see if I can describe this. There are two columns in the center. And students are on the same Google Sheet. And they’re answering questions. And the more they answer, the more they’re figurine is moving across the screen. And whoever gets theirs down first, quote unquote, wins. Some other ones are students are answering math questions, and they’re gaining words to then finding a word search at the end, or students are gaining access to pictures. And at the end, it’s kind of like a, an eye spy game where they get to move a magnifying glasses over the image, or one led it zooms out and students have to guess what it is. And the reason why this brings so much creativity to the math classroom is students are still doing the math. But they’re incentivized to do the math because they gain access to these fun games and activities and features in the end. So it’s boosting their engagement to get answers and questions correctly, because it gives them something fun to do. Plus, like I said before, it brings in a built in fast finisher activity. And by the way, you can find all of the ones that I said before in my TPT or my Teachers Pay teacher’s store, which I’ll link down in the description of this podcast episode, I have tons of different ones for lots of different concepts. So you get to choose what you would like to do. So in wrapping up today’s episode, thinking back about the different things, the warm ups that you can be creative with the creative style of questioning, teaching multiple methods, or providing a variety of activities for students to do. Some of these are not time consuming, but others are. So you really have to pick and choose because as teachers, we don’t have a lot of extra free time. So choose what you can do to provide that extra creativity and choice and fun in the classroom. Without it being overwhelming to you. And hey, if you are part of the chaos to community mini course that I have, I have a list of all like community builder tasks, team building tasks, and then math thinking tasks that you can just easily click and implement in your classroom. It’s ranked by length of activity and difficulty for students. And those are some of my most favorite ones to do with students. And I’m constantly adding to those lists as well. And then to especially talking about like those Google Sheet activity or the scavenger hunt with the creative questions, my TPT store has tons of activities that I use in my classroom with my students to help bring and cultivate creativity there. I will say there are some products in my store that are not creative, and I’m going back and revamping the old ones now that I know better and know how to better implement creativity in my classroom. So all in all, I want us to start bringing creativity to the math classroom because I wanted to stop being portrayed as this stuffy old subject that no one cares about, or no one uses because it is so cool, and it can be so fun and exciting. So I hope you join me on this journey of bringing creativity to the math classroom and if you found this episode fun and it’s fightin itself. I want you to leave a review wherever you listen to the podcast because it allows the podcast to reach other teachers so that they can learn to how to engage students academically, so that they can deeply understand and love math. And with that calculator, thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode. To find all the links and resources to things talked about in this episode, head on over to Miss Kuiper’s classroom.com and click on podcast

Transcribed by https://otter.ai