Unit Posters Help Students Summarize Their Learning

  View Students' End of Unit Posters

At the end of each Unit, a teacher in Michigan has students summarize the Investigations on posters. Throughout the year students improved their ability to document and articulate their mathematical thinking.

Process

• At the end of each Unit, students randomly draw a card with an Investigation number. Each student makes a poster to describe the mathematics in that Investigation.
• In the beginning of the year, students are given a general rubric of what is expected: Big Ideas, Summary, and Mathematical Evidence.
• Students give feedback to each other's posters such as "nice job", “good organization”, "could be neater", etc.
• As the school year progresses, students are given mathematical sentence starters to encourage more detail, such as, "I thought of doing this problem a different way which is....", "The mathematical evidence showed that....", etc.

Comments from the Teacher

As we end each Unit, my students are so excited and start to ask me, "When are we going to do the Unit Posters? It's our favorite thing to do."  The day that students draw an Investigation card is my favorite. As the students pick a card, I hear, "Oh, I hope I get Investigation 2, I loved doing the Wumps." (Stretching and Shrinking Unit) Or, "I hope I get Investigation 3 because I loved pouches and coins." (Moving Straight Ahead Unit) These are my favorite days!

The examples are from a Grade 7 Units. However, this strategy could be used in any grade.

Examples of the way the students’ posters developed throughout the school year.