#Made4Math - Student Engagement Flipchart

Can you believe that a year has gone by since we first started the #Made4Math project? In that time, hundreds of ideas have been shared by the Math Twitter-Blog-O-Sphere that have truly transformed classrooms across the world! I am so blessed to have been a small part of that and I am grateful everyday for such a caring community that truly has a "gift culture". Daily, I am pushed by my fellow bloggers and tweeters to be a better teacher and a better person and for that I am forever grateful!

Now, on to this week's project...

I have to say, I am SO excited for this week's project! As you may know from previous posts, I read Embedded Formative Assessment earlier this summer (and am currently re-reading it!), as well as Teach Like a Pirate. Both of these books were excellent and really pushed me to re-examine some of my teaching practices, particularly in the area of student engagement.

A few weeks ago, I got into a discussion with @pamjwilson and @rachelrosales about using formative assessment strategies and how to have them 'at my fingertips' for quick reference. Rachel shared that she used index cards on a key ring which first got me started on this week's project. I really liked the key ring idea and not too long after that, I saw a spiral bound notecard pack at Dollar Tree that I also liked. Then one of them tossed out the idea of using baseball card sleeves to organize strategies... hmm, that would be a nice way to be able to see the strategies listed out! *Insert the sound of wheels turning in my head here...*

But no matter what the idea, it just didn't feel *right* to me, so back to the drawing board I went...

This past week, I was at the Dallas AVID Summer Institute, and on the way back, was reading through a book that a colleague had with her called Summarization in Any Subject, which cemented some of these ideas of wanting to incorporate formative assessment and engagement strategies.

On Saturday, hubby wanted to do some errands and one of the places we ended up was at a used book store. It was there that I finally got my A-ha! moment. There was a small flipchart book of Literacy Strategies for the Content Areas and that's when I knew what this week's project would be. I mean, the bells were going off so loud in my head that I know the other patrons of the store had to hear them!

Please let me introduce my #Made4Math project... a formative assessment/summarization/engagement flipchart!

I took a plastic file folder and used index cards upside down for my strategies. I did many Google searches on summarization strategies, formative assessment strategies, etc, and used those documents to narrow down the list to ones that I truly felt I would use and that I felt would work with my classes. On each index card is the name of the strategy and a short description. Sometimes I included variations of the strategy as well. This will stay on my desk so that I can refer to it often. I'm really excited to use this as I'm planning lessons this next year!

If you have other ideas for strategies to add to my folder, please let me know!

What did YOU make for #Made4Math?
Head on over to the Made4Math blog to see other awesome ideas!