Personal Whiteboard Exchanges

October 27, 2019

Any verbal response can also be a student-written whiteboard exchange, but not vice versa.  So, although choral activities provide efficient, spirited skill and terminology practice, this delivery mode limits what students and teachers can practice and assess, respectively.  Mathematical eloquence consists of more than automatizing skills and internalizing vocabulary.  To develop it, children must also master models and formats, both of which require writing.  In the process, teachers gain clearer insight into their students’ thinking, because written responses illuminate comprehension and confusion in ways that verbal answers do not.

Teachers can train their ear to determine whether or not a class’ choral reply is 90% accurate.  Although helpful, this informal assessment method doesn’t hold students completely accountable.  Children can mime responses and audible answers do not pinpoint how individuals arrived at correct or incorrect answers.  Written responses do, however, albeit more slowly.

What personal whiteboards lack in efficiency, they make up for in student engagement.  When children are armed with boards and markers, teachers can stimulate focus at almost any time using simple prompts such as Write the number 18 or Draw a circle as a lead in to more complicated fluency practice.  The former might be followed with the direction Break apart 18 into ten and some ones while Estimate to shade one-fourth of the circle could succeed the latter.  The initial directive activates student participation, while helping teachers instantly know who is and is not paying attention.  More importantly, it instills students with feelings of success even if the follow up questions are challenging for them.

Learning models such as number bonds, arrays, and place value charts are an integral part of elementary mathematics, because they help students organize and visualize concepts.  Practicing them on traditional slates or whiteboards is inefficient, because children spend a disproportionate amount of practice time drawing graphics.  A clear sheet protector containing two pieces of cardstock creates sturdy boards that are easy to draw on and erase.  Although less durable than a traditional slate, they have the capacity to embed graphic organizers, allowing students focused practice without having to re-draw.  This not only helps them in their present learning, but also in future grades, e.g.

• Students who can configure single-digit number families into number bonds, can then use that part-whole relationship model to decompose three-digit numbers, money, and later fractions.

• Visualizing arrays as two multiplication and division equations, helps students more efficiently master their times tables and later the Distributive Properties of Multiplication and Division.

• Children who understand the base-ten number system using a place value chart are prepared to learn decimal place value in later grades.

When students can see a four by three array as four basic equations, but also two fours + 1 four or 4 threes – 1 three, they can later solve challenging multiplication facts.

The product of three times nine can be found using two “friendly” multiplication facts, leading to a simple subtraction problem:  (3 x 10) – (3 x 1) or 30 - 3.