Division Brings Students Together

By Kristie Guevremont
4^th Grade Teacher

This fall, as we study divisibility rules in 4^th grade, we’ve challenged our students to collaborate in small groups to create charts with the different divisibility rules. Our hope is that this will be helpful on many levels.

To get started, the students and I created a checklist of what each poster had to have and the students made a first draft. Then we shared the posters for feedback by doing a “museum walk” — students quietly walked around the room to look for strengths/improvements for each poster.

Constructive comments from the students included:

"I like what you did, but make sure it's even."

"Should we use colored pencil first or sharpie?"

"I'll work on the words, while you start sharpie-ing"

"Do you want to come over here, so it's easier?"

As a class we reflected on what could be improved and made our final checklist. The final result is a large poster that is now displayed outside Math Specialist Heather Zetterberg’s office.

The major takeaways for a project like this are for students to practice positive group work, learn more about the design process, give/accept constructive feedback, and experience math in a "real-world" purpose.