Math Reflections

One of my most common questions about my Interactive Math Journal has to do with the reflection section.  I have included a page of suggestions in my math journal resource for reflections - but because a lot of these suggestions are for creative, higher-order thinking skills, a few teachers have contacted me, telling me that some of their students struggle with the reflections.

In all honesty, I have been blessed with a pretty creative class the last two years - probably 80% of my students have no difficulty coming up with a reflection for the left side of their pages.  And because we always share our reflections (either by doing a pair-share, or by inviting students to come up and show their work under the document camera), the students are exposed to a lot of different ideas each week.  That being said, I do have a few that struggle coming up with an idea - or when they do come up with an idea, it's not a true reflection of the work done in class - perhaps they've done a great little comic, but it just mentions the concept - doesn't really show or explain it.

For this reason, I've created a new product that I hope can help your students with their reflections in math class, Math Reflection Fans.  This isn't just for math journals, though, it's also for discussions during math class, for reflection after problem-solving activities, for diagnostic assessments, or for summative assessments.  I've based the reflection questions on the 6 levels in Bloom's revised taxonomy:  Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create.  There are over 100 different questions and prompts included - at least 15 different questions for each level.  I've also included a checklist page for each of the different levels - the students can use it to keep track of what questions they've answered, or the teacher can use to keep track of questions asked.  If you wish, you can click on the picture or the title link to preview the product.

We also do a lot of problem-solving and three-part math activities, so I'm excited to use these fans during these activities, as well.  

I use my question fans ALL the time in the classroom - I usually choose one or two and put them under the document camera to project for the students.  For this reason, I like to keep them close by.  I hang them from the handles on my filing cabinet (which is right behind my desk).  My document camera is on the table right beside my filing cabinet.  I find this so handy - I don't have to search through my books or binders to find a great question, and I don't have to waste paper typing one up and then photocopying and cutting for the students.  Easy Peasy!!!

Be sure to check back in tomorrow - I've got a great math journal idea for metric conversion, and we used my math reflection fans for our reflection - here's a sneak peak ...

Happy Saturday!

Jen