A New Look to Math Notes with the Drawing Tools on iPad

I remember a time in math class when I was a student, feverishly copying notes from the board, not knowing what it meant but determined to replicate every last number and variable into my spiral notebook. The stress continued when I was behind what my teacher was saying and they began to erase to make room for more. Whew! What a stressful experience! I hope you do not have the same memory as I do in that situation, but I am afraid it was a common occurrence for many of us.

I encourage you to pause and consider an alternative: more time to think, sketch, color code, annotate, and mark up notes so they make sense to the students. As a teacher, I know my students are more likely to engage in the lesson and use their notes as a takeaway tool throughout my class if they are individualized, color coded, and focused on quality over quantity.

What does this look like in class?

Share the notes document with the students as a PDF via your learning management system (LMS) and ask the students to prepare for the lesson by opening today's notes document in Notes. Begin a regular system with your students to Work with PDFs with Notes on iPad and they will become familiar with the routine. By sharing the same starting point with the students, you can save time by including math problems, graphs, and images on the PDFs and begin teaching immediately.

Example Task

The Workout Plan task below is an Algebra I problem that can be used in a lesson on representing and solving linear inequalities.

Workout Plan Task

Set up

1️⃣ Send the students a PDF to open in Notes.

2️⃣ Use the Three Reads Routine to support your students to make sense of the problem. This instructional routine sets the stage for all students to employ their skills to solve word problems after they have clarity around what it means. As a whole group or with a partner, the students read the problem three times, each with a different purpose.

Read #1: Understand the Story Context (After this read, clarify any vocabulary that might be a barrier to the students' understanding. Then ask, "What is this problem about?")

Read #2: Identify Quantities (After this read ask, "What can be counted or measured?")

Read #3: Reveal the Questions and Plan Solution Strategies (After this read ask, "What are some ways we might solve this?")

I really like using the Three Reads Routine with my students to set them up for successful problem solving and to practice a process they can do individually in the future.

Solve

The process to solve the Workout Plan task looks like this:

• Identify variables (x and y)
• Label axes on graph
• Plot and label key points 
• Draw line (solid or dashed)
• Test sample (x,y) values
• Shade graph to represent solution

However, I encourage you to save this list until you wrap up, or consolidate the task. For now, keep the discussion in the context of the task.

3️⃣ Launch the task by challenging the students to consider relevant situations, such as:

What if you chose to jog only and not bike at all? How many minutes would you need to jog to meet your goal? Pause and allow students to think and talk with a partner and mark up their notes using the Drawing Tools.

What if you chose to bike only and not jog at all? How many minutes would you need to bike to meet your goal? Pause and allow students to think and talk with a partner and mark up their notes using the Drawing Tools.

What if you only jogged for 10 minutes one week? How many minutes would you need to bike to meet your goal? Pause and allow students to think and talk with a partner and mark up their notes using the Drawing Tools.

4️⃣ Begin to model and provide opportunities for the students to mark up their notes using the Drawing tools.

Identify the variables and choose colors to use to color code the rest of the task. Pause and allow students to choose their own colors to mark up their notes using the Drawing Tools.

Move to the graph and label the axes. Plot and label the two key points (the first two situations above) and challenge the students to determine other jogging, biking or (x,y) combinations that would meet the workout goal of 2100 calories per week. Pause and allow students to think and talk with a partner and mark up their notes using the Drawing Tools.

Make a connection between the solutions the students are able to discover and the graph, shading the region that represents the solution.

5️⃣ Finally, reveal the steps to solve (above). Pause and allow students to add these steps as a checklist in their notes.

Markup Tips for Math

You can use Markup to draw geometrically perfect shapes—lines, arcs, and more—to use in diagrams and sketches.

Learn more about how to Use Markup to add text, shapes, stickers, and more to documents on iPad.

1. In the Markup toolbar, tap the pen, marker, or pencil tool.
2. Draw a shape in one stroke with your finger or Apple Pencil, then pause.
3. A perfect version of the shape snaps into place, replacing the drawing.

The shapes you can draw include straight lines, arrows, arcs, continuous lines with 90-degree turns, squares, circles, rectangles, triangles, pentagons, chat bubbles, hearts, stars, and clouds.

Are you inspired to give your math notes a new look? Share your story in the comments below.

Attachments

Linear Inequality Notes.pdf

Download  (153.2 KB)