7a. Global Citizen | Math | Grades 6-12
To engage students in math communities, teachers can show students different communities that exist online. Once registered, these forums allow students to post and respond to math questions as well as engage members in conversation threads focused on math topics. To introduce these communities into their classroom and build their students’ comfort levels, teachers can first direct students to one of the communities and have them explore it. Next, teachers can ask students:
- How do you think you could benefit from joining the community?
- How do you think community will benefit from you joining it?
- Which community do you think is the best “fit” for you to join?
Teachers can then use a think-pair-share activity to frame this conversation. During the think, students can explore the math communities and formulate a response to each question. Next, students can pair with a classmate, and the two students can discuss their responses to each question. To conclude, the pairs of students can share their thinking with the larger class community. At this point, teachers can assign students to join the community the students selected in response to #3 and engage it in a way that aligns to the benefits the students identified rom #1 and #2. Furthermore, teachers can give students a timeframe for reporting on their engagement with the communities, with a specific on the benefits the students received from the community in addition to the benefits the community has received from the students’ engagement.
EdTech Resource for Online Math Communities
Student Objective
Instructions
Justification
This instructional idea has students engaging online math communities, where they can ask and respond to questions as well as sharing their thoughts and reading thoughts of other people about different math topics. This engagement, in both the questions and topics, will broaden students' understanding of math.