We knew we wanted to provide an opportunity for students to peer review the other students work and provide feedback to them.  Today was that day!  We started math class by explaining to students that today they would get a chance to provide feedback on others work.  We talked about what feedback looks and sounds like and that they would provide a “glow” or praise point for each presentation as well as a “grow” or idea for improvement.

We used sticky notes to make this easier to manage.  We used the same chart and after each presentation, took the notes off and stacked them to give to the students presenting.

After reading some of the comments, we found it necessary to talk about feedback being specific and actionable as well as focused on the math.  Many of the comments were about the editing or said things like, “I wish you would have explained it more.”  We used this as an example of how to modify the feedback to be specific by saying, “I wish you would have explained how to round numbers to the nearest tenth more or given more examples.”

We reflected later that maybe in the future, we would allow for two grows, one that focused on the math and one that focused on speaking more clearly or editing tips.

After we watched each of the presentations, the students were given time to read and reflect on their feedback in the project groups.

Below are some pictures of the process.

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This is the first day that things really started coming together.  I took the students who had completed filming their 3 Act videos to help them edit the videos and upload them to Nearpod (they were really excited about putting them into Nearpod like we do).  Chelsey (Mrs. Meyer) helped edit videos and Shelley (Mrs. Eaton) helped the rest of the students film their videos and activity instructions.

These two groups created really creative 3 Act tasks.  One group’s videos were too large, so we had to upload them to their Google Drive from the iPad, upload them to Vimeo to shrink them down to an SD format, and upload them back to their Drive and onto Nearpod.  The other group needed to do a text overlay for their Act 3 and get them uploaded into Nearpod.

They worked on the slides and response questions and completed their 3 Act Tasks today!  Here are the links to Too Many Smarties! and Stacking Paper.

Chelsey uploaded the other completed videos to her Youtube Channel as students finished up their editing.  Shelley continued to film and we have a few students who need to still edit their videos.  Tomorrow we will be watching all of the videos and providing peer review and feedback.  Students will then revise their activities based on the feedback and submit their final projects!

Read the Day 6 post, for an update on the review and feedback process!

I can’t even tell you how much fun we are all having with this project!  Students are ready to get to work, they are having deep mathematical conversations, and the products are coming along nicely!  Most of the students are at least half way through their projects and they are progressing much faster than we had originally thought they would.

The one thing we wish we would have captured on video (that we will definitely do next time) is the conversations students were having while they were filming.  The problem solving that was going on was just remarkable to hear from 4th graders.  They were polite and respectful to each other’s ideas, but they were also very focused in making the best possible product.

When we started the project, we told the students that we had been asked to present what we had been doing with 3 Act tasks with both of our classes for the School Board.  We could bring two students, and we would love it if they could have their projects completed by that time.  We really weren’t sure it would happen, and we thought we would just have a couple of students go and talk about what they thought about 3 Act lessons, etc.  By today, we realized that it was quite possible we would have actual student projects to share and we were super excited!

The room was noisy and messy and full of conversation!

Read the next post for Day 5!

Mrs. Meyer said she was getting really confused about where each student was on their project, so she created a checklist for them to use to keep track of which parts of their project were done, which were in progress and which hadn’t been started yet.  She put it on their resources page on Canvas, introduced it to the students and had them make changes for their group.

It was exciting to look around the room and see all students from both classrooms, working together on projects of all varieties!

This group decided to make a game for rounding numbers to the nearest ten and hundred.  They would bounce a ball and the whiteboard it landed on, would determine which number you must round.  I was so impressed.  I asked them, “how do you get the numbers?”  They said, “they are on the whiteboard.”  I said, “yeah, but how do you know which numbers to put on the whiteboard? Or what to write after you play through once?”  They both looked at each other and said, “oh!  we didn’t think of that!  What if we rolled dice?”  I replied with, “brilliant!  Do you need me to get you some dice?”  They agreed, I grabbed some dice from my office and they revised their game.

Mrs. Eaton helped students practice before they filmed, I helped students film, and Mrs. Meyer helped with video editing, thinking through ideas, and everything else!

Time was soon up again, and we put our things away for the next day.  Read on to see what happened on Day 4!

Our 2nd day of project work, we provided a rubric for students to use when constructing their projects.  We also created graphic organizers for each of the activities that they could use as an outline for their project.  We introduced the graphic organizers and gave them time to get in their groups and fill them out.  Planning was now in full swing.

When we introduced the rubric, we spent extra time on sources.  I discussed how I research for a video lesson by going to Youtube and watching a bunch of videos on the topic.  I make note of the instructional strategies I find useful, and disregard those I don’t like.  I think about when I have learned about the subject before and what I found useful.  I look up the iReady lessons and other resources that provide teaching points.  We provided them with the iReady example lessons for each of their topics, and we created a resource page in Canvas that gave them links to helpful resources, programs they might use, and examples of 3 Act tasks.

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By the end of the day, we already had students who were ready to film.  We split up and I went into our technologist’s room next door to help with the filming while Mrs. Meyer and Mrs. Eaton, helped monitor the planning of other groups.  We wanted this all to be student led, so we facilitated their project creation by asking questions such as, “how will your audience know what you are teaching them?”  “Is there a visual aid you could use to make the process more clear?”  We gave them hints on filming such as, “when you are drawing on the whiteboard, we can only see your back.  What if you tried filming from a different angle or scooting to the side a little as you write?”

Time flew again and we had to stop for the day.  Follow day three, coming soon!

Last week, we printed out the iReady reports for our 4th grade classes in math.  We took the 5 profile reports (there were actually only kids in 4 of them) and passed them out to groups of students.  We told them that today, they would be the teachers.  We explained that we gave them the reports that we look at from their iReady assessment.  We use these reports to help us determine areas that need review or reteaching.  There task was to determine a concept that they felt they could teach others.  They would then choose to work individually or in a group to create their choice of a 3 Act task, a flipped video, or an activity to teach the concept.

We decided to mainly focus on Profile 2 since those are the number and operations concepts.  We went through and talked about each of the concepts and students discussed the concepts they would like to present.

Students signed up for groups and we listed their objectives, group members and choice of product on a chart that we kept available to them.  The next week, we would provide them with rubrics and graphic organizers to plan their projects.  As you can see, many of them got right to work and started planning immediately!  They couldn’t wait to get started.

Follow along with us on our journey of student driven lessons by following the blog each day!