Teaching math remotely is like climbing a mountain made of rice – especially when you also need to plan some asynchronous math activities. You feel like you’ve made some progress and then your students fall apart. And then you fall apart.
How do you keep your students’ stress level down? Work with them in small groups. Yes, I know. That means you need to plan something for the others to do. So, here are five simple asynchronous math activities that won’t cause undue amounts of stress for you or your students.
1. Online tutorials
Once you’ve taught your lesson, send the kids off to complete an online tutorial. This reinforces the learning and can be super valuable. Sometimes having someone else present the material in a different way can really consolidate the learning for your students. Check out The University of Waterloo has courseware for Grade 7/8 students. It is my favourite because it is free (yay!) and clearly walks them through examples and gives students a chance to practice. Nearpod and Khan Academy are two other options you can explore.
2. Self-checking activities
Self-checking activities for Google Sheets are all the rage right now and they make great asynchronous math activities. Your students get immediate feedback and you don’t have to do a thing (besides give the instructions). Check some out here.
3. Practice problems with answers
Want to go old-school? Share some problems from the textbook and include the answer key so students can check their work. Give students some choice in the questions they answer, though! Pick three problems of your choice or only complete the odd numbered questions.
4. Open-ended responses on Flipgrid
Here’s one of my favourite asynchronous math ideas. After you’ve taught your lesson, have your kids respond to a prompt like this, “What did you learn about adding fractions today?” Use Flipgrid and have them record their response. They can use the whiteboard tool to show their thinking or just talk things out. It’s a great alternative to having to write out their responses all the time.
5. Do some asynchronous math offline projects
Have you used choice boards or activity menus as a culminating task? Here’s an example of one for Financial Literacy. Have your kids make a crossword puzzle using key terms from your unit or make their own worksheet (with answers). How about a board game based on the topic? Or even a sketchnote or mind map with important concepts and examples?
If you need other tips for how to structure your remote learning lessons check out this blog post with some ideas.
Finally, make sure you grab this free growth mindset in math lesson to start changing the way your students think about math.
I’m Lauren, from “From Math to Music” – your go-to person for all things Math and Classroom Community.
Being a middle-school teacher and a mom of 3, I know how hard it is for busy teachers to create resources that allow for deep thinking and build classroom community. That's why I love sharing tips and tricks that you can you use in your middle school classroom right this minute.
