Saturday, September 23, 2017

A Cross-Curricular Practice Structure

I call it Self-Checking Advanced Color by Number, because instead of coloring certain areas of a picture based on your answer, you are labeling certain areas of a diagram based on your answer.  It was inspired by this tweet from Nathan Kraft:


And the wheels were turning.  Imagine the possibilities for this!  It could be used to practice any math skill and tied to any other subject that lends itself to labeling diagrams: maps in Social Studies (states, capitals, countries, world landmarks), other body systems, the periodic table, or the order of planets in Science, sentence diagramming in Language Arts (okay, this one might be a stretch, but maybe matching vocab and definitions?).

I haven't tried this out yet, but this is what I envision.  I'm imagining a set of math problems - one for each blank in the diagram.  All of the math answers are paired with the corresponding answer in the answer bank.  For example, say students are learning about the periodic table in science.  The first math question corresponds to labeling the first element in the periodic table.  If students know the first element is hydrogen, then they will be able to check that their math answer is paired with hydrogen in the answer bank.  If students don't know that the first element is hydrogen, but they are confident in their math, then they will learn that the first element is hydrogen.

This is not using math in another subject, which is typically what I think of when I hear "cross-curricular."  However, it is a chance to practice both math and another subject at the same time.  I'll write more once I've tried this in class!


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