I first read about this idea from Amy Gruen's blog.
During my area unit I was teaching composite areas for the first time. I found a worksheet on BetterLesson that I really liked so I edited it and made a powerpoint to go along with it. The worksheet has a direct instruction, guided practice, and independent practice section. I've never taught this before and I was really nervous that everyone would be lost and confused. I was expecting tons of questions and chaos. So I needed some kind of structure or strategy that would keep me from pulling my hair out.
Here's what I came up with. I worked out the answers to each problem individually on a post it.
On the chalkboard, I wrote numbers with a square under it and put each post it inside the square.
I told the class as they worked to check their answers with the post it. If they were stuck then they could also go look at how the problem was done. This is better than letting them take the post-its to their seat which would mean temptation to copy every answer. If a student stood up there long enough to copy down every problem, I'm pretty sure I would notice that.
It would have been a good idea to spread them out more but I only have one chalkboard.
It turns out that since my students are so lazy, most of them didn't bother to get up and look but instead just asked the student sitting closest to the board to tell them the answer. And that was okay, because they were still able to check their answers and I knew they weren't cheating.
I also told students I would not be answering any questions like "Is this the right answer?" since they could easily answer that themselves.
What went wrong is that since we were doing composite areas, there are many different ways to getting the answer. Which is good. But looking at my post it note with only one way to do it...not so good.
In theory, the idea was great and it's a strategy I will try again. But probably on something that's a little more...straightforward.
