Making Math Meaningful: Scavenger Hunt & Explain Everything

What?

In math class this week, we participated in a Scavenger Hunt and were expected to wander around the Brock University campus, explore various patterns (i.e. shape, colour, size, texture, direction), and document our findings with iPads. We utilized the Explain Everything software to share what we found with our classmates. Explain Everything is easily accessible on a number of platforms and involves various tools including: voice-to-text recording, pointers, text-boxes, picture and video modifications, and dropbox for submission.

So What?

The Scavenger Hunt was a great way to get us out of our seats and encouraged us to look for real-world examples of what we are learning in the class - patterning. The opportunity to learn about new pieces of technology and applications was also important for us as teacher candidates are always looking for new resources to implement in the classroom. This activity also enabled us to develop our teamwork skills as my fellow teacher candidates and I used our abilities to collaborate, communicate, and think critically while exploring our surroundings and completing the tasks assigned to us. The Explain Everything application was also interesting to explore. We found that the application was beneficial for collaboration as multiple people could use it at the same time while allowing us to express our information in methods we felt most comfortable with.

Now What?

The Scavenger Hunt is a great activity to motivate students to consider learning as not limited to the classroom. This activity encourages participants to explore the world around them in order to find real-world examples of the topic discussed. I plan to utilize the Scavenger Hunt activity on a cross-curricular level as it is a fun way to promote student collaboration, communication, creativity, and critical thinking! An example of such implementation would be in Science whereby students are given the task of exploring their school and documenting various resources on environmental issues, or even issues they would like to address. I would then encourage the students to consider the impacts such issues have on various Canadian regions which would involve both Science and Social Studies. A step further would be to ask students to critique the literature they encounter to then incorporate curricular expectations of Language Arts. As we did in our class, the Explain Everything application would benefit as both a method of presenting their learning and as a method of assessment of their findings for myself. Students would have the freedom to present their findings in a creative manner that best suits their interests. For example, auditory learners may prefer to incorporate the sound option on the application and visual learners may prefer to present their findings primarily with videos and pictures. Overall, students thrive from inquiry- and problem-based learning and such activities enable them to develop and thrive in these areas of 21st century thinking.

The following are some of the pictures my fellow teacher candidates and I captured during this activity: