Doodle Notes for the Paperless Classroom
Can’t Print Your Doodle Notes? Even in a school that is not tech-based, there are days when problems arise and you just can’t make enough copies of doodle note sheets or other handouts for your students. Maybe you didn’t have a chance to run to the copier, you’ve reached your school’s printing limits, or your printer, once again, ran out of ink. We’ve all been there. A great solution is using visual notes in a digital format. I’ve rounded up all of my tips and tricks to make doodle note-taking in a digital format as effective as possible! (DocHub app used with visual note template as background) Benefits of Visual Notes by Hand First, a disclaimer: I strongly believe in doing notes by hand, on paper, whenever possible! (See this post on digital classroom vs. math by hand.) But of course, there are times when digital lessons can be wonderful and practical. So the goal here is to do the best you can to maximize the brain benefits in any situation. Visual notes in a digital format can give you a break from making copies, wasting paper, and using up expensive printer ink. Some days this format is more desirable, convenient, or just plain necessary for a successful class! However, you should note there is a lot of research out there that shows notes are so much better when taken by hand, rather than digitally. Scientific American tells us that even though people generally type faster than write, more notes aren’t necessarily better. In three separate studies that compare students taking notes by hand vs. students taking notes by laptop, they found those who wrote out their notes had a stronger conceptual understanding and were more successful in applying and integrating the material. So, while there’s no doubt there are clear benefits to digital notes, keep in mind this format should be used in moderation. Students get the most benefits from taking notes by hand! (Inkflow app used with background template from this set) DocHub A friend of mine, Leah at leahcleary.com, provided an excellent post about how to make your worksheets work digitally. It’s actually much simpler than you may think! Here are the steps to get your doodle note sheets into a digital format. You need to follow a few very simple steps:
Then, with their devices, students have easy access to the note pages (or worksheet). With DocHub, they can draw, write, highlight, and even insert text or images on their note sheet! (Decimals doodle note set used with DocHub) timelapse video of Pythagorean Theorem Doodle Notes used with DocHub Student-created graphic notes Another cool way to avoid printing or copying doodle pages is to let your students create their own graphic notes on an app on their device. The key is uploading a PDF of the doodle note backgrounds or templates for your students, that they can add to a note-taking app. There are many apps out there, and I have not played long with all of these yet, but here are a few to try: Squid This app allows you to use an interactive pen to markup any PDF, while still feeling natural through pressure. Change aspects of the pen quickly with the touch of a button on the pen sidebar. Inkflow Visual Notebook This free app provides a space for your students to upload images/graphics and create fantastic sketch notes with smooth writing tools. A nice feature that I like about Inkflow is the ability to select an area and move it around. This can be so helpful in creating visual notes – Students can actually re-organize the page as they go, to improve the visual layout and flow! This helps overcome some of the challenges of student-created sketchnotes. One downside to this app is that you have to pay for colors :( (Doodle note background template used with Inkflow app) GoodNotes Although not free, this app is fairly inexpensive ($7.99) and provides the best platform for your students to create visual note pages! On this app students can annotate on PDFs, write on the app like real paper, search handwritten notes, and even convert handwriting to text. Whink This app is $5.99, and allows students to effortlessly create beautiful notes on their device. Your students can take unlimited visual notes with this app by handwriting notes and marking up PDFs. Try adding templates as backgrounds to make the process easier. Tips for using doodle notes https://www.doodlenotes.org/in-the-classroom.html If you’re looking for some great tips to better implement doodle notes in your lessons, keep reading! Here are some excellent tips for implementation: 1. Show a Sample To maximize the benefits of doodle notes, you should allow students to fully express their personality and creativity. That being said, students may need a little bit of guidance to help get them started, especially if you’ve just recently introduced doodle notes. The perfect way to guide them is showing a completed sample of the doodle notes sheet when you begin the lesson. 2. Keep Research in Mind Be sure to keep the research in mind as you implement doodling in math class. Keep your focus on the brain benefits as you guide your students through these. Of course, just by coloring or doodling, they will get some visual connections and will activate both sides of the brain, but to maximize the benefits, this should ideally occur while also getting verbal input. Scientists learned that the act of coloring or doodling requires just enough focus to keep you from zoning out, but not enough to actually distract you. So, in order to maximize this, there should be focused, active teaching occurring during the doodle note lesson. 3. Limit Time When it is time to cut off the lecture or the lesson, be sure to stop. Stop just as you would with regular notes. Move on. Students who want to add to it can do so later during free time or at home. Do not add class time for just coloring. That is not the purpose. If students do want to color, embellish, add a million little doodle spirals, that's fine. But once the learning and teaching portion is over, the brain benefits start dwindling. Coloring the corners is not the valuable use of class time that completing the note sheet is. Guide your class to doodle as they fill the page, during the moments that they are still listening and learning. Let them do fancy lettering of a vocabulary word to help it stick in their minds. Let them color ideas that go together using the same pattern. Show them how to focus in on the visual triggers that will stick in their brain. To read more of my tips, visit How to use Doodle Notes in Math Class! I am continually impressed by all of the teachers in Doodle Note Club! I am constantly hearing great ideas from other teachers about how they implement Doodle Notes. Here are a few of my favorites:
To read more about how other teachers are implementing doodle pages, go to In the Classroom! To Read Next (on Your Visual Note-Taking Journey) -
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Looking for ways to make Pi Day unique and memorable? Every math teacher (and student) I know looks forward to an awesome Pi Day. It’s the highlight of our math year!
It can be tricky to find new, unique ideas, especially when the internet is filled with the same ideas, like allowing students to eat pie while memorizing digits of Pi. While there’s nothing wrong with this, I think it can be fun to switch it up a bit! Plus, since these are pretty unique ideas, it’s unlikely your students will have ever done these before. I’ve gathered some different ideas that students will surely love and talk about for years to come!
Video
Have your students watch this video first to get the basics they'll need to work through the other activities below.
Pi Doodle Notes
Next, choose either doodle notes or stations (see below). Either option gets kids engaged with the actual math behind Pi Day! If you’ve tried doodle notes, you already know kids love them! They are the perfect blend of creativity and rigor; doodle notes activate the left and right sides of the brain, which improves memory and retention. To read more about the many benefits of doodle notes, go here! These Pi Doodle Notes are perfect for Pi Day or anytime! Here’s what it includes:- approximations of Pi - definition of "irrational" - meaning / utility of the number pi - room for a history fact about Pi - room for a formula that includes Pi - background of Euler using the greek letter to represent it - circumference and diameter - why we can't know or recite ALL digits of pi You can choose one of the two sheets, or use both. Students get to creatively fill the doodle note sheets out with the information, and can color and embellish them in any extra time!
Pi Day Stations
My favorite way to set up class on Pi Day is by implementing Pi Day Stations. One way to do this is with the "Delicious Pi Problems" as work stations, and the other way is with hands-on variety stations.
The Delicious Pi Problems offer practice with circumference and area of circles (and volume of cylinders in the challenge level) using yummy foods! These word problems include circle formulas with pi and it doubles as a coloring book!
The Pi Day Stations are another great option, and include a hands-on exploration, a creative challenge, a wordsearch, and other fun learning centers that you can print and set up for your class to go through.
Mini Pies
Most students, if asked their favorite part of Pi Day will be quick to answer with, “The food!” After all, they probably don’t normally get the chance to eat anything in class, let alone sweet treats.
An easy option is individual pies. This way, you don't have the mess and wasted time of cutting and serving full-size pies. Students can measure the circumference and diameter if you have not done that already with other circles in the stations. Switching to mini pies makes the class period go MUCH smoother. It's well worth the 50 cents per pie. You can have volunteers bring in stacks of mini pies to help cover the cost. Get Students Laughing with Pi Jokes It’s always a good idea to begin class with some smiles and laughter! Break out a few of these hilarious and dorky Pi jokes throughout the class period, and set the mood for the class period. Here are some favorites:
Grab the Pi Day Bundle
If you want to be all set for Pi Day with everything you need for all the grade levels and courses you teach, this Pi Day pack will be all you need to be all set for ALL or your Pi Days... FOREVERMORE. The discounted bundle contains plenty of options that you can print and use, including pi practice problems, the pi doodle notes, Pi Day learning stations to choose from, and even pi infographics that you can hand out as bookmarks.
What's included in the Bundle:
Get the downloadable bundle of Pi Day materials here. I hope you try one or more of these ideas! Don’t forget to plan your Pi Day the right way- Check out Perfecting Pi Day for my tips and tricks for planning the perfect day and avoiding my previous mistakes! Do you have anything awesome planned for Pi Day? We’d love to hear in the comments below! Don’t forget to subscribe to Math Giraffe, by entering your email in the box below.
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1/31/2018 1 Comment Football - Themed Math LessonsFootball Math Activities for this Week
It is an exciting time of year for our football-loving students! With the big game coming up, football is the focus of many students’ conversations. I feel the most proud and confident about a lesson when it is relevant to my students’ lives. I’ve rounded up some ideas to bring that game-time excitement to your classroom!
Financial Football – Free online game
Kids can play this interactive, video-based online football game to explore financial literacy. There are options for one player, or head-to-head play. Lesson plan PDFs to accompany the game are available as well, with options for age 11-14 (rookie), age 14-18 (pro), and even an option for 18 years and older (Hall of Fame). It’s really well done, and students think it is pretty cool. You’ll need an active flash player on the classroom computers to use this. Creating a Graph Have students review the history here showing all winners, and determine the best way to represent the data on a graph. They can show all years by creating a graph that best displays the information. This is a great opportunity to incorporate technology as well. They can do paper or poster graphs to plot it, or use tech tools to create the graph. Try having students work in pairs. Linear Equations Football Game Your students are sure to love this fun, football-inspired game for Algebra! With this game, there are so many easy ways to differentiate. You get two sets of “football play” cards. Set A has basic linear equations in slope-intercept form, and Set B has y-intercepts that are not integers (Students must use Point-Slope Form on these cards.)
You also get two different worksheets. Worksheet 1 has students only write equations in Slope-Intercept Form. Worksheet 2 has students finding and recording Slope-Intercept Form and Point-Slope Form.
Students pair up and play the game with their partner. Each turn a new "football play" card is drawn. The offensive player decides which of two points on the coordinate plane to pass the ball to. The defensive player decides which of two defenders will attempt a tackle. A player scores by writing the equation for the line of the pass correctly....as long as the defender did not accurately make a tackle at the same point. Check out this video to see how the game works! The Science of NFL football NBC Learn teamed up with the National Science Foundation to create a 10-part video series centering on the Science of NFL football It covers everything from spheres to health and hydration to the Pythagorean Theorem. This page is more geared towards a science class, but some videos definitely belong in your math teaching. These videos are perfect for getting your students’ attention! I especially love this video on Geometric Shapes: Spheres, Ellipses, & Prolate Spheroids! Mean, Median, Mode, and Range Use this tweet map to explore the number of times each word was tweeted in each region during the 2009 game. By hovering over areas and scrolling across the time bar, kids can see the totals. Just give a few question prompts that help them review measures of central tendency. The possibilities are endless! STEM Lesson with #DeflateGate This STEM-based football lesson is great for older students. It would work well for high school math, Chemistry, or Physics class. Students explore links between pressure and temperature. They’ll convert units to metric, watch a video, and use the expression P1/ T1 = P2/T2 to determine whether a cold game may have affected the inflation of the ball. This lesson on the Ideal Gas Law can be just a quick reading of the article in the last few minutes of a class period, or you can go beyond, and try it out with a football and a freezer!
Dollars and Cents at the Concession Stands
Something I’m pretty sure everyone loves at football games are the concession stands! Bring this delicious aspect into your classroom with this creative game from Scholastic. Scholastic shares a great idea for younger learners. Pass out poster board to small groups and have them build concession stands, drawing and pricing their menu items; using play money and a “register” have students pay for items and make change accurately. For middle school students, consider printing out the statistics of the two teams in the superbowl, the New England Patriots and Philadelphia Eagles. Using these numbers, have students work in pairs to find the mean, median, and mode, etc. You can also have graph the stats and compare the two teams. If you teach a subject other than math, Scholastic offers a ton of other ideas to integrate football in your lessons! For fun math ideas throughout the school year, subscribe here to receive updates straight to your inbox!
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