Teaching Math with Google Apps: 50 G Suite Activities

Teaching Math with Google Apps

50 G Suite Activities

Alice Keeler and Diana Herrington

foreword by Jo Boaler

Volume 1

Teaching Math with Google Apps

© 2017 by Alice Keeler and Diana Herrington

All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing by the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. For information regarding permission, contact the publisher: shelley@daveburgessconsulting.com.

This book is available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for use as premiums, promotions, fundraising, and educational use. For inquiries and details, contact the publisher at shelley@daveburgessconsulting.com.

Google and the Google logo are registered trademarks of Google Inc.

Published by Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc.

San Diego, CA

http://daveburgessconsulting.com

Cover Design by Genesis Kohler

Interior Design by My Writers’ Connection

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017935673

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-946444-04-2

eBook ISBN: 978-1-946444-05-9

First Printing: March 2017

Contents

Foreword

Get to Know Alice

Get to Know Diana

Introduction

Google Math

50 Activities to Teach Math Using G Suite

0. Get to Work

1. Create a Directions Document

2. Hear from Everybody

3. Private Comments Are the Assignment

4. Cut Quarter Sheets of Paper

5. Have Students Show Their Thinking

6. You Want to Eat a Brownie

7. Look Up Information

8. Create a Blank Document

9. Create Community

10. View Form Responses in a Spreadsheet

11. Use Pixel Art

12. Guide Instruction

13. Feedback Conversations

14. View Student Work in Google Drive

15. Choose 3 Problems

16. Conversations Are the Assignment

17. Bitmoji Feedback

18. Have Students Put Themselves in It

19. Use Slides for Learning

20. Small Group Investigation

21. Discuss Strategies

22. Explain 3 Ways

23. Create Collaborative Google Slides

24. Do a Math Problem Wrong

25. Create a Formative Assessment Quiz

26. Create Geometry Constructions

27. Create Interactive Instruction

28. Create a Drawing

29. Use Real Data

30. Use g(Math) in a Google Form

31. Create Video Playlists

32. Show Me You Know It

33. Use Spreadsheet Formulas

34. Geoboard Activity

35. Use Manipulatives

36. Create Collaborative Maps

37. Students Write Guiding Questions

38. Have Students Design Spreadsheets

39. Analyze Data Sets

40. Crowdsource Information

41. Focus on the Learning Objective

42. Use Graph Paper

43. Collect Data

44. Provide Assessment Choices

45. Provide Constraints not Math Problems

46. Play Ball

47. Digitize Analog Work

48. Discovery Activities

49. Start with a Picture

50. See Math Everywhere

Conclusion

Google Tutorials

Add-ons

Additional Resources

Diana’s Story

Structuring a Math Lesson

Mathematical Mindset by Jo Boaler

Acknowledgments

More from Dave Burgess, Inc

About the Authors

Foreword by Jo Boaler

What a treat for any mathematics teacher and their students — a book filled with recipes for student engagement and learning. Inside the pages of this book you will find a lovely combination of rich tasks that invite students into important mathematical discoveries, and pedagogical advice that, if followed, will move students from passive receivers of knowledge to active inquirers.

We are in the twenty-first century, but visitors to many math classrooms could be forgiven for thinking they had stepped back in time and walked into the Victorian era. Students often spend a lot of their mathematics classroom time watching a teacher work on mathematics, then trying to follow their steps. Chalkboards may have been replaced with smart boards but very little else has changed.

Research tells us there is a different, more productive role for students in classrooms — one in which they are actively engaged learning mathematics, thinking about and discussing ideas, and collecting information and resources from many different places, not just the hand of the teacher. The authors of this book — two mathematics visionaries, Alice Keeler and Diana Herrington — make an important point: If students can look up a solution to a question on the Internet, the question is not worth asking. Instead of banning technology for their students — which makes learning mathematics into an unworldly event that is unlike the rest of students’ lives — these teacher-authors embrace it and give students more productive mathematical activities to think about and work on.

This book is filled with pedagogical ideas and advice, which are valuable, and it also provides a range of incredible tasks that invite students to be mathematical problem solvers and inquirers. We know from new brain evidence that our brains want to think visually about mathematics. When we work on mathematics, even an abstract calculation, five brain areas are involved and two of them are visual pathways (https://www.youcubed.org/visual-math/). For many students, their mathematics education is almost entirely numerical, giving them little or no opportunity to strengthen important pathways.

Increased mathematical understanding comes with increased communication between different areas of the brain. The activities in this book provide important brain communication opportunities as students work with both visuals and numbers. The activities also invite students to be problem solvers and inquirers, which are the most important roles for students. We don’t know what mathematics students will need in their future lives; technology is changing at such a fast pace that most of what the mathematics students are learning in school now will be obsolete when they enter the workplace. In the future, we know we will need people who can problem solve, think quantitatively about the world, and reason with their ideas. Teachers have a choice: to teach students content passively so they only learn to reproduce steps, or to teach them through active engagement so that when they learn mathematics content they also learn to use it, to think creatively, and to apply ideas to different situations. The former is uninteresting for most students; the latter is engaging and important. This book provides the activities that invite students to think quantitatively, to use important technology, and to give students a learning experience that will help them develop an active identity as a mathematics problem solver.

Thirty years ago, the Fortune 500 companies in the United States were asked what they most valued from school graduates. The list below shows calculation was second highest on the list. Ten years ago the list had completely changed, calculation was now second from bottom, and the most valued attributes became teamwork and problem solving. Employers will never need students to calculate, as we have technological tools that can do this more effectively than any human, but they will need students to reason, to think quantitatively, to model with mathematics. Through the pages of this book students will learn important mathematics, they will also learn to use it effectively.

Fortune 500 most valued skills

From Mathematical Mindsets, by Jo Boaler, 2016

Mathematics classrooms are often speed-driven spaces in which many students decide they are not a math person and give up. The source of this unproductive idea is often the speedy thinkers that drive the pace of classroom instruction. We know that many mathematics students, including those who have the potential to be world-changing mathematicians, think slowly and deeply about mathematics. When teachers ask questions and then take an answer from the first student that shoots up their hand, they give a very clear message: speed is what is valued in their classroom. Other students who think less quickly, but just as well, often give up, thinking that they cannot be successful in math. This is a problem for any teacher. So how do teachers set the pace of a classroom when students think at different rates? Keeler and Herrington provide a perfect solution: they ask students to submit answers in a Google form. Speed is no longer an issue and student thinking is what is valued. Teachers can see the thinking of all the students, not just a select few, and students have interacted with an important piece of technology which they can appreciate and learn from.

This is just one of the many ideas in this important book that I am excited to be a part of. Invite students into the twenty-first century in your mathematics classroom, engage them with inspiring visual tasks and equip them with the mathematical tools that they can use to solve problems and to make a difference in the world.

And, viva la revolution!

Jo Boaler

Stanford Professor, co-founder of youcubed.org,

 author of Mathematical Mindsets

Get to Know Alice

I have taught math 1:1 almost my entire teaching career. I started teaching math in 1999 after graduating with my BA in mathematics. While I often hear you cannot teach math with technology, I truly do not know how to teach math without it. In 2011, I became a Google Certified Teacher (now Google Certified Innovator). I love helping educators almost as much as I enjoy working with students, which is why my blog, alicekeeler.com, provides EdTech help for teachers who want to learn more about using Google Apps. It’s also the reason I have worked with Google on projects such as YouTube for Teachers and Google Play for Education and co-authored the books 50 Things You Can Do with Google Classroom and 50 Things to Go Further with Google Classroom.

Although I earned a bachelor’s degree in math, I haven’t always felt good about the subject. I am not bad at math, but like a lot of students, I struggled with rote memorization. In fact, I struggled so much with timed math tests in elementary school that I ended up repeating the fourth grade. I never did pass the timed tests, but I eventually learned to love math. Today, I can make killer spreadsheets to solve