Have you tried using mini white boards for higher grade levels/math levels--specifically Pre-Calculus or higher? I'm not sure that mini white boards would work great with AP Statistics as the responses often require written explanations and checking of conditions that would take much too long to scan in a room of 30 students. However, your posts have me considering using mini whiteboards for my Pre-Calculus classes, but I haven't used them since I taught Algebra 1 several years ago. When you check the whiteboards, are you looking at work and final result or just the final result? How many students do you have in your classes typically? Just trying to think of logistics as well as content appropriate considerations. The fact that I wouldn't be using the whiteboards in all of my classes is also a consideration as that could also increase the time it takes to distribute and collect materials. Any advice or guidance you can provide here would be appreciated!
I've only used them personally in 7th grade but I taught Algebra II/Precalc/AP Calc in the past and I would have used them. I can't speak to AP Statistics.
The largest class I've had has been 28 and I think it still works well. I guess I would emphasize that I'm not asking tons and tons of questions on mini whiteboards so I take my time and try to look at everyone. This also pushes me to focus on the highest-leverage CFU questions. A different strategy I use sometimes is to pick out some "indicator" students -- i.e. 3 students who typically struggle, 3 students who are typically strong, and 3 in the middle, and use that as a rough sample. So I look at a few indicators and make an inference based on that data.
I don't pay much attention to the work unless we're going step-by-step, for instance going one step at a time solving equations and checking each step, so there I'm not trying to read all the work at once. But I don't do that very often.
I find mini whiteboards most useful for checking subcomponents of a skill. So if I were back teaching Precalc here are a few examples I might use:
If I'm teaching students to graph trig functions, I might ask for the period, amplitude, frequency etc of a function.
If I'm teaching graphing rational functions I might ask for where the vertical asymptotes or the type of end behavior.
In exponents and logs it's a good chance to check simple log skills.
For sequences/series you can check the formula for the sequence.
On top of all that, I would be checking integer operations skills, fractions skills, exponent skills, factoring, etc -- all the prior year skills that students are often shaky with and become an issue in Precalc. A quick check and (if necessary) reteach at the start of class with stuff like that can be really powerful, and that might be where you find the most value in higher grades.
So the idea is to check some of those small subcomponents and identify issues early rather than trying to do tons of full questions on mini whiteboards. Because you're right, trying to do lots of long problems that are typical in Precalc is going to take lots of time and be hard to digest the information efficiently. I wouldn't think of it as just taking problems you would normally assign at the end of a lesson and doing them on mini whiteboards, but finding efficient ways to check for understanding that happen earlier and are more actionable. I can't speak to stats but my guess is there are similar small elements of skills that you can check along the way? Though maybe I'm wrong.
I will say it took me a while to get my systems down and I only teach two different classes (7th grade math and an extra support math class). There's definitely a learning curve and a time cost to get the systems up and running. I don't want to tell you what will work in your classroom, but my experience was that I found more and more uses for mini whiteboards the longer I used them.
I appreciate your thoughtful and comprehensive response. I think using mini white boards to formatively assess the "atom objectives" is a great idea. Just a few example skills that quickly came to mind in Pre-Calculus include finding the sine and cosine of any angle, evaluating log expressions without a calculator, changing from exponential to log form (or vice versa), evaluating inverse trig expressions, simplifying trig expressions using identities, and evaluating arithmetic or geometric series. This may not be an "everyday" tool like it is in your classes, but it could definitely be a tool that I utilize on a fairly regular basis. Thanks for providing your experience and insight to make me rethink what could be a useful tool/practice for my classes!
I love this terminology of “atoms”. I just used mini whiteboards today to check understanding of how to label triangle sides with a reference angle before jumping into solving with trigonometry and I will now forever have this word “atoms” in my mind when I think about these mini-skills students need. It’s a helpful schema: atoms, molecules, cells rather than thinking in terms of Blooms or other more hierarchical ways of classifying.
Yea I think there are two ways Bloom's can go wrong. One is you get too focused on jumping right to the higher-order stuff and skip the reference angles or whatever. A second is you assume students can't do higher-order thinking because they're behind grade level.
I like thinking about atoms because it's very precise. I don't care what my students' NWEA MAP scores are. I care whether they know the specific atoms that build up to the larger skill I want to teach. If they don't know those atoms, great let's reteach and practice. Once they do know the atoms, let's expand and increase the difficulty. It makes planning for challenging standards much more concrete.
"Q: What do you do if students are being mean to each other about wrong answers?"
I had a coach suggest asking the class, "Why might an intelligent person answer...?" With that framing, it's a little safer to answer: even if the student is wrong, they just got called intelligent! And if they know that's not the right answer, they have to think about why the right answer is more accurate. Strategic cold calling is really useful here.
"Q: Where do you get the whiteboards, markers, and erasers?"
I bought some shower board from the Home Depot across the street from my school and asked them to cut it into 2 foot squares. The attendant hesitated until I said it was for school, and then he was all in. (In hindsight I should have gone smaller.) They don't last as long as the "professional" MWBs, but they're a whole lot cheaper to replace.
I'm just gonna put it out there...Is there any research at all about mini whiteboards being the "best way" to check for understanding other than from teacher anecdotes?
Don't take this the wrong way, as at times I use these in my classes but is it really the "game changer" many like Adam Boxer seem to make it out to be?
No, I'm not aware of any substantive research on mini whiteboards specifically. I just did a google search and it seems like there's a little bit out there but not of the quality we would need to draw firm conclusions.
I think I can make a case based on research that retrieval should be overt (students should be writing or saying their answer, not just thinking in their head) and that teachers should get answers from all students as often as possible (as opposed to primarily asking questions of students one at a time). Mini whiteboards meet both of those criteria with flying colors but they're also not unique, lots of other ways to do it.
I'm a huge fun but I wouldn't argue they are the only way to accomplish these goals.
Thanks for the response Dylan, I think there are good ways that they can be used and for certain purposes yes. It surprises me however how quickly so many have moved to mini whiteboards as kind of the "must have", when we don't even really know if using them is any better than other methods.
I am trying to get my head around how I feel about many teachers using them for the majority of their lessons, and whether this actually may work against many of the ways mathematics is used and applied by mathematicians and others...I feel there are some possible problems that haven't been considered yet, I'd be interested to see if there ends up ever actually being any research on them...
All fair. I wonder if this is a bit of a regional difference? It looks like you're in Australia, and anecdotally I'm seeing much more uptake of mini whiteboards in Australia and England. Here in the US they are rare, especially at the high school level.
I also feel concerned about teachers using them for the majority of lessons, that just isn't an issue I've heard of in the US. To me the best use is for quick checks for understanding, then we put them away and get back to work with pencil and paper.
I'm also curious if any research will come out illuminating some of these practical questions.
This is such a generous piece of practice-sharing. What comes through isn’t just how to use mini whiteboards, but the thinking discipline behind them.
The temptation with a tool this powerful is to overuse it, but you’re honest about the trade-off: whiteboards are slower, and that’s exactly why they’re valuable. They buy you clarity, not efficiency. The fact that most of the real work still happens on paper reinforces that these are moments of calibration, not the lesson itself.
I love the reminder that sometimes the best technology in the room -- the tools that help us humans to solve problems efficiently and effectively -- requires zero electricity . . . even if it may still need an authorized use policy. #canIjustwhiteboardmymomitwillonlytakeasecond
yup. I'm feeling that way more and more about paper as well. It's tempting to believe all the bells and whistles of modernity can improve learning, but that doesn't seem consistent with how I see tech used in schools.
This is one area I need improvement. I usually do a lot of visual cueing of understanding (thumbs up/down) and physical movement (move to the right/left side of the room if you agree with...), but whiteboard (especially in math) are such an underutilized resource in my classroom. Thank you for the reminder!
I think these all complement each other. Left/right is great for some mid-class movement and energy pickup. Thumbs up/down is great for getting some consistent active participation from students. Mini whiteboards are great to check for understanding. The more tools you have the better.
I use whiteboards every morning with my students! They love it. Biggest problem I'll have is them saying, "That's easy." But they're learning.
Have you tried using mini white boards for higher grade levels/math levels--specifically Pre-Calculus or higher? I'm not sure that mini white boards would work great with AP Statistics as the responses often require written explanations and checking of conditions that would take much too long to scan in a room of 30 students. However, your posts have me considering using mini whiteboards for my Pre-Calculus classes, but I haven't used them since I taught Algebra 1 several years ago. When you check the whiteboards, are you looking at work and final result or just the final result? How many students do you have in your classes typically? Just trying to think of logistics as well as content appropriate considerations. The fact that I wouldn't be using the whiteboards in all of my classes is also a consideration as that could also increase the time it takes to distribute and collect materials. Any advice or guidance you can provide here would be appreciated!
I've only used them personally in 7th grade but I taught Algebra II/Precalc/AP Calc in the past and I would have used them. I can't speak to AP Statistics.
The largest class I've had has been 28 and I think it still works well. I guess I would emphasize that I'm not asking tons and tons of questions on mini whiteboards so I take my time and try to look at everyone. This also pushes me to focus on the highest-leverage CFU questions. A different strategy I use sometimes is to pick out some "indicator" students -- i.e. 3 students who typically struggle, 3 students who are typically strong, and 3 in the middle, and use that as a rough sample. So I look at a few indicators and make an inference based on that data.
I don't pay much attention to the work unless we're going step-by-step, for instance going one step at a time solving equations and checking each step, so there I'm not trying to read all the work at once. But I don't do that very often.
I find mini whiteboards most useful for checking subcomponents of a skill. So if I were back teaching Precalc here are a few examples I might use:
If I'm teaching students to graph trig functions, I might ask for the period, amplitude, frequency etc of a function.
If I'm teaching graphing rational functions I might ask for where the vertical asymptotes or the type of end behavior.
In exponents and logs it's a good chance to check simple log skills.
For sequences/series you can check the formula for the sequence.
On top of all that, I would be checking integer operations skills, fractions skills, exponent skills, factoring, etc -- all the prior year skills that students are often shaky with and become an issue in Precalc. A quick check and (if necessary) reteach at the start of class with stuff like that can be really powerful, and that might be where you find the most value in higher grades.
So the idea is to check some of those small subcomponents and identify issues early rather than trying to do tons of full questions on mini whiteboards. Because you're right, trying to do lots of long problems that are typical in Precalc is going to take lots of time and be hard to digest the information efficiently. I wouldn't think of it as just taking problems you would normally assign at the end of a lesson and doing them on mini whiteboards, but finding efficient ways to check for understanding that happen earlier and are more actionable. I can't speak to stats but my guess is there are similar small elements of skills that you can check along the way? Though maybe I'm wrong.
I will say it took me a while to get my systems down and I only teach two different classes (7th grade math and an extra support math class). There's definitely a learning curve and a time cost to get the systems up and running. I don't want to tell you what will work in your classroom, but my experience was that I found more and more uses for mini whiteboards the longer I used them.
I appreciate your thoughtful and comprehensive response. I think using mini white boards to formatively assess the "atom objectives" is a great idea. Just a few example skills that quickly came to mind in Pre-Calculus include finding the sine and cosine of any angle, evaluating log expressions without a calculator, changing from exponential to log form (or vice versa), evaluating inverse trig expressions, simplifying trig expressions using identities, and evaluating arithmetic or geometric series. This may not be an "everyday" tool like it is in your classes, but it could definitely be a tool that I utilize on a fairly regular basis. Thanks for providing your experience and insight to make me rethink what could be a useful tool/practice for my classes!
I love this terminology of “atoms”. I just used mini whiteboards today to check understanding of how to label triangle sides with a reference angle before jumping into solving with trigonometry and I will now forever have this word “atoms” in my mind when I think about these mini-skills students need. It’s a helpful schema: atoms, molecules, cells rather than thinking in terms of Blooms or other more hierarchical ways of classifying.
Yea I think there are two ways Bloom's can go wrong. One is you get too focused on jumping right to the higher-order stuff and skip the reference angles or whatever. A second is you assume students can't do higher-order thinking because they're behind grade level.
I like thinking about atoms because it's very precise. I don't care what my students' NWEA MAP scores are. I care whether they know the specific atoms that build up to the larger skill I want to teach. If they don't know those atoms, great let's reteach and practice. Once they do know the atoms, let's expand and increase the difficulty. It makes planning for challenging standards much more concrete.
"Q: What do you do if students are being mean to each other about wrong answers?"
I had a coach suggest asking the class, "Why might an intelligent person answer...?" With that framing, it's a little safer to answer: even if the student is wrong, they just got called intelligent! And if they know that's not the right answer, they have to think about why the right answer is more accurate. Strategic cold calling is really useful here.
"Q: Where do you get the whiteboards, markers, and erasers?"
I bought some shower board from the Home Depot across the street from my school and asked them to cut it into 2 foot squares. The attendant hesitated until I said it was for school, and then he was all in. (In hindsight I should have gone smaller.) They don't last as long as the "professional" MWBs, but they're a whole lot cheaper to replace.
I like that framing! Going to steal that.
The shower board is a good recommendation though I've never used it myself. Quality matters way less than just finding something that works.
I'm just gonna put it out there...Is there any research at all about mini whiteboards being the "best way" to check for understanding other than from teacher anecdotes?
Don't take this the wrong way, as at times I use these in my classes but is it really the "game changer" many like Adam Boxer seem to make it out to be?
No, I'm not aware of any substantive research on mini whiteboards specifically. I just did a google search and it seems like there's a little bit out there but not of the quality we would need to draw firm conclusions.
I think I can make a case based on research that retrieval should be overt (students should be writing or saying their answer, not just thinking in their head) and that teachers should get answers from all students as often as possible (as opposed to primarily asking questions of students one at a time). Mini whiteboards meet both of those criteria with flying colors but they're also not unique, lots of other ways to do it.
I'm a huge fun but I wouldn't argue they are the only way to accomplish these goals.
Thanks for the response Dylan, I think there are good ways that they can be used and for certain purposes yes. It surprises me however how quickly so many have moved to mini whiteboards as kind of the "must have", when we don't even really know if using them is any better than other methods.
I am trying to get my head around how I feel about many teachers using them for the majority of their lessons, and whether this actually may work against many of the ways mathematics is used and applied by mathematicians and others...I feel there are some possible problems that haven't been considered yet, I'd be interested to see if there ends up ever actually being any research on them...
All fair. I wonder if this is a bit of a regional difference? It looks like you're in Australia, and anecdotally I'm seeing much more uptake of mini whiteboards in Australia and England. Here in the US they are rare, especially at the high school level.
I also feel concerned about teachers using them for the majority of lessons, that just isn't an issue I've heard of in the US. To me the best use is for quick checks for understanding, then we put them away and get back to work with pencil and paper.
I'm also curious if any research will come out illuminating some of these practical questions.
This is such a generous piece of practice-sharing. What comes through isn’t just how to use mini whiteboards, but the thinking discipline behind them.
The temptation with a tool this powerful is to overuse it, but you’re honest about the trade-off: whiteboards are slower, and that’s exactly why they’re valuable. They buy you clarity, not efficiency. The fact that most of the real work still happens on paper reinforces that these are moments of calibration, not the lesson itself.
I love the reminder that sometimes the best technology in the room -- the tools that help us humans to solve problems efficiently and effectively -- requires zero electricity . . . even if it may still need an authorized use policy. #canIjustwhiteboardmymomitwillonlytakeasecond
yup. I'm feeling that way more and more about paper as well. It's tempting to believe all the bells and whistles of modernity can improve learning, but that doesn't seem consistent with how I see tech used in schools.
This is one area I need improvement. I usually do a lot of visual cueing of understanding (thumbs up/down) and physical movement (move to the right/left side of the room if you agree with...), but whiteboard (especially in math) are such an underutilized resource in my classroom. Thank you for the reminder!
I think these all complement each other. Left/right is great for some mid-class movement and energy pickup. Thumbs up/down is great for getting some consistent active participation from students. Mini whiteboards are great to check for understanding. The more tools you have the better.