How to send a digital word wall to students

Over the years, I've written a lot about math word walls and how strongly I feel about them. My teaching changed with the addition of math vocabulary references to our classroom walls, and I have so enjoyed all the great feedback from teachers abut the same being true in their classrooms. 

With so many teachers and students now learning online, I needed to (quickly) figure out a way teachers and students could now access their math word walls digitally. The thought of teachers no longer having access to their classroom bulletin boards made me so sad! So after a lot of thought about the formatting, I worked over the summer and into the early fall to convert every one of my math word walls to also work digitally in Google Slides. They are clickable and interactive and the format *almost* feels like a real classroom. I decided to use photographs of the word walls to give students the feeling of being in a classroom. Here is me taking [what I thought was] the last photo. Turns out I needed to take more, but it was a good moment. My back was relieved:

In this post, I explain the exact steps to take to send your digital word wall to students. You can send a digital word wall just as you would any other Google Slides file, but I like the method outlined in this post better. Here's a short video tutorial:

What I like about this method is that students cannot edit the digital word wall but you can. This makes the word wall a great reference for students and a way for you to deliver information. When you edit your version of the word wall, the edits magically show up on the word wall you shared with students. Cool!

Steps to send your digital word wall to students:

1: Open your digital word wall

2: Go to file>share and make sure its set to "anyone with the link can view"

3: Copy the share link

4: Paste the share link somewhere to edit it. I use Word but you can paste it anywhere. 

5: At the end of the URL, change /edit?usp=sharing to /present

6: Copy and share the entire URL (ending in /present) with students. That's it!

If you are in Google Classroom:

If you'd like to post the /present word wall link to Google Classroom for your students:

7: Copy the entire link with /present at the end.

8: Paste the link on the Stream tab for your students with a note about it being their math vocabulary wall.

Now, whenever you add to your digital word wall (notes, video links, etc.), students will see your edits on their digital word wall!

Browse all math word walls - print and digital.

How-to Guide to Attacking Word Problems

Word problems confessional: I dread teaching them. They're one of those things I have had a hard time teaching. My personal word problem solving technique, if you can even call it that, goes something like: "Read it over and over and over again until it makes sense, cross out words I don't like because they're unnecessary and I don't like that they were added as a distraction, read it again, imagine myself in the problem, pull out the numbers, make them into an equation, does the equation make sense?, solve it, does the solution make sense?" How could I ever teach this? It's a heaping disaster!

Word problems don't all fit into the same neat little box. There is no one graphic organizer, or magical online math word problems solver, that works well for all word problems. Each word problem is completely unique. This has always felt so incredibly messy to me when it comes to teaching word problems. 

But this all changed when I came across this paper on George Pólya's Problem Solving Techniques. There are no graphic organizers, there is no overarching goal to fit everything into neat little boxes on a 1-pager. The messiness is expected and embraced and a welcomed part of it all. If you haven't heard of George Pólya's problem solving technique, here is a partial summary:

How to Move a File From One Google Drive to Another

Have you ever downloaded a Google file for school, only to have it get "stuck" in your home Google Drive? Or maybe a file you'd like in your home Google Drive won't seem to budge from your school Drive? 

Below are simple directions for how to move a file from one Google Drive to another. I'll use the example of how to move a file from a school Google Drive to a personal Google Drive because I have gotten this question a lot! 

Activities for Teaching Unit Rate

Unit rate is one of my favorite topics to teach in Consumer Math. There are endless examples of unit prices gone wrong, and they all give me a giggle. But as funny as they can be, it's important for kids to know how to calculate unit rates so that they can determine the best deals. Sometimes, or maybe a lot of the time, the best deal isn't always obvious.

In this post are some of the photos I have taken of unit price fails as well as some unit price activities I have made for students. Here are some photos I have taken over the years of unit prices gone wrong:

Mathematicians look like all of us project

Like so many awesome math teachers, I met Megan McLean through social media at some point over the last few years. Megan is a teacher all the way on the other side of the US, and with the help of Instagram, I get to feel like she is my colleague next door. Over the last few months, Megan has been researching mathematicians from all over the world and collecting their stories into her Instagram account @mathematicianslooklikeallofus. This post highlights a small sliver of the mathematicians she has found and also links to where we can learn more. Here is Megan's guest post on the work she has done so far on this important project.

Guest post by Megan McLean

@mathematicianslooklikeallofus

Digital Math Escape Rooms

Whether your students are working independently in your classroom, in groups or distance learning from home, I wanted to make some super-engaging digital math activities to get students excited about practicing their math while saving paper. These new digital math escape rooms have been built in Google Forms with no outside links. The directions are simple -- enter a 4-letter code to advance to the next puzzle -- so students can focus all of their energy on their math.

Because of the sudden, widespread need for digital math activities, I updated many of my printable math materials to also include digital versions. (You can see those here.) I have also been creating different types of digital-only math activities to work in Google Slides and Google Forms. One of the newest activity types I've been making in Google Forms are these digital math escape rooms.

These digital math escape rooms can be sent to students working online or as a paperless option for students working in your classroom. Students can work together or individually.

I have been getting some great feedback on these new digital math escape rooms: 

Moving Math Forward: Virtual Math Conference October 2020

I am very excited to be presenting at the Fall 2020 Moving Math Forward virtual conference with 14 other awesome math educators. This will be a 3-day event starting Monday October 5, 2020, with options to attend 1, 2 or all 3 days.