These past couple school years have thrown many curve balls. From virtual learning to social distancing regulations and unexpected school closures, teachers’ plates are abundantly full. This article aims to lift some of the weight off of educators’ shoulders by providing four lesson plans for middle school math classes. All can be adapted to an online format and will engage your students and accelerate their learning!
Basic and Straightforward Lesson Plan With High Student Involvement
- Begin with a “Do Now”—a low-stakes question to warm up students’ brains and reinforce a recently-learned skill. This website has many great ideas for short, grade-specific problems and worksheets. Depending on your class, it may be wise to have students hand these in for grading to motivate them to do some light studying prior to each class. Perhaps invite a student to come up to the board and present their approach to the class. If virtual, have a student upload a picture of their work or let them use the drawing feature many video conferencing applications have in order to show their thinking.
- Following the theme of student presentations, randomly select students to present their answers to the homework. Encouraging students to walk through and explain their process forces them to think critically about their approach and the topics involved. Allow students to pose questions or offer other methods. Step in when necessary, but be sure to give students the space to toy with their ideas too.
- Synthesize the key topics and methods that appeared in the homework. Enlist the students’ help to create a running list of the material covered in the unit. Students can copy these lists to use as a studying “checklist” prior to assessments. Ask which ideas are proving to be more difficult to grasp and perhaps assign supplemental work that hones in on these skills.
- Now that the students have done most of the leading for this class period, it’s time for you, the teacher, to step in and speak directly to the class. If there is new material to cover or explain, spend a few minutes outlining it and answering questions. This point in the class is a great time to give a short preview to students about what their classwork and homework will cover.
- Split students into groups or “breakout rooms” and give them a worksheet or problem set to work on collectively. Bounce between each group to check on their progress and assess which groups are moving more slowly. If students do not complete their work, consider whether you want it to be added to the homework or to be finished next class period.
Game Day
- Begin by splitting students up into two teams. Line them up single-file facing the board. If remote, do not use breakout rooms. Have each group select their first contestant. Read or project a math problem or question that should not take more than 45 seconds to solve. Make sure everyone is on mute if you are remote. The first student to correctly complete the problem earns a point for their team. Continue this mini “contest” for as long as you’d like or until a team reaches a certain number of points. Be sure every student has a chance to participate.
- A spin-off of this game is to use the same two-team structure and fill a hat with a variety of math concepts from their recent units. If you are teaching virtually, consider entering the topics into a random generator beforehand, or randomly assign them to students. Have a student from one team pick from the hat and briefly explain the concept. If they are correct, their team gains a point. Then repeat the same for the opposing team. Consider adding a “phone a friend” option to engage more students and to give each team a chance to earn partial points even if the initial student did not correctly explain the concept.
- If you have a larger class, it may be better to play a game like “Jeopardy”, which allows for multiple teams. Begin by splitting the class into as many teams as needed (ideally with around three students per team). Have students choose their topic and point value and give them a set amount of time to produce an answer as a group. Allow other teams to “steal” for optimal student involvement. If virtual, use breakout rooms and submit the question to the chat so that teams can work independently of one another. This game requires a larger amount of preparation beforehand, but is a huge pay-off when you see how much your students enjoy it.
- Debrief with your students at the end of the games to highlight the topics that routinely came up. Also emphasize the ones that prove to be tricky for much of the class. Consider rewarding winning teams with extra points on the next quiz or test!
Pre-Assessment Class to Prepare Students
- Ask students to prepare a quiz before this class period. The quizzes should cover material that is fair-game for the upcoming assessment and should only take 10-15 minutes. Make sure they create an answer key too. Randomly pair them up and ask them to exchange quizzes with their partner. If remote, students can “share” their document with each other. Have students grade the quizzes they took using their classmate’s answer key. This activity accomplishes two goals: forcing students to deeply consider what will be on the assessment, and gain valuable practice which will calm their nerves and help them to identify the areas where they need additional practice.
- Expand on the running topic list you may have created from other classes. Perhaps list relevant problems associated with each key idea and create bullet points that succinctly describe the concept. If there are problem types that routinely show up, give an example of how to complete it (for example, completing the square). By the end of this exercise, you will have formed a mini study guide that students can copy and reference when studying.
- To engage students further, assign students to make a “pamphlet” detailing the test material. They can divide a paper into thirds and list the topics along with their relevance, problem examples, and connections to other topics. Encourage them to add color and diagrams in order to increase the fun and make the project more accessible for visual learners.
Hands-On Activities
- Although these activities may be better in a classroom setting, they can all be adapted for virtual learning. If students are learning about the concept of slope, assign them to find the slope of stairs in your school or in their home. Ask them to consider what a good slope would be for a set of stairs and what a poor slope would be.
- For a yummy assignment, give students a basic recipe but replace all the measurements with math expressions. For example: add ½ x ¾ cups of brown sugar. This project will not only be a huge hit, but students can practice using fractions and see their practical use.
- If students are learning about pie charts and percentages, have the students create a pie chart detailing the activities of their day. For example: 33.3% sleeping, 20% playing, etc. Make sure they add a key and color code the pie sectors.
- If students are learning about lines and graphs in general, ask them to graph a scenario. Perhaps they choose to create a line graph that plots a car’s distance vs. time or the level of bathtub water as someone fills up the tub, gets in, and drains it. The possibilities are truly endless so encourage the class to get creative. Give them space to share their products with their classmates.
Written by Lucy Reid
