I Have Who Has: Let's Talk!

I am always looking for ways to intentionally engage with vocabulary. One of my favorite strategies to get students speaking and thinking is an activity called I Have Who Has. Each student gets a card (see the example below). The teacher starts with the start card and reads it aloud. The student who has the answer to that question responds by reading their card and asking the next question. The game continues in this way until the end card. 

Things I love: 

1. Every single student speaks out loud. How often does every student get a chance to speak whole group in your room?
2. Students have to really focus and listen to the definitions as they are being read. Speaking and listening are two language domains that can easily be overshadowed by reading and writing but are equally as important in language development! 
3. Students are somewhat forced to engage because if they check out or stop listening they become the weakest link in the chain.

It is important to acknowledge that ELL students may be super overwhelmed to read out loud whole group but that doesn't mean they shouldn't get the opportunity. A little pre-teaching or scaffolding may be needed. Set them up for success!

As part of my work as a high school learning coach (instructional coach) I was fortunate enough to work with an AP Human Geography teacher who was looking for more ways to purposefully plan and engage with vocabulary. We created a deck of I Have Who Has cards for all of her 7 units for the year and placed visual cues or hints on the back of each one.

In addition to doing the whole group read through of the cards, we also had students work in small groups to race to make a chain of cards (like dominos). The discussions, arguments, and excitement as students worked together to define the words and find the matches was loud and super engaging. 

Another goal of the teacher I worked with was to implement ways for students to think about the connections between the vocabulary words within a unit and between units. To do this, we handed small groups a mixed up set of cards from multiple units. We told students not to worry about the I Have Who Has part, and instead just focus on the I Have term. Students were instructed to write a complete, content related sentence using as many of the cards as possible, with at least 2 terms for different units. 

The time and effort required to make the cards may seem laborious, but once the cards are made there are so many ways to use them in your classroom to purposefully engage with vocabulary!

Two Truths and A Lie

1. I lived on Kodiak Island in Alaska for a few years.

2. I am one of 6 children.

3. I am not a huge fan of horses.

Two of the statements above are true and one is a lie... can you guess which one?

I think we have all been somewhere and used this strategy as an ice breaker or get to know you game. When talking about myself I actually dread this activity because I never know what to say. My lies are usually way too outlandish, and I don't have many deceptive truths about myself. If you guessed #2, you are correct. I am one of 4 children. Horses are not my jam. And my father was stationed on Kodiak Island for a few years when he was a pilot in the Coast Guard.

As much as I don't love this game outside of the classroom, I LOVE it in the classroom with students. It's a fantastic protocol for so many different content areas. Here's two ideas!

Language Arts Example:

Have students read a piece of text. From the text, have students write two true statements and one false statement. Share whole group or switch papers between small groups and have students figure out which statement is the lie. I love this as a way for students to engage with the same piece of text multiple times. Each new set of three statements creates a new purpose for reading. Students continually have to reference the text to check or dispute a statement.

Here’s an example of my three statements from this text:

Math Example:

Give each group 3 problems to solve and tell them to solve 2 correctly and 1 incorrectly on purpose. They definitely need to show all their work during this activity! Share whole group or switch papers between small groups and identify which one is solved incorrectly. I love this as a way to reinforce the process of showing work and creating conversations around common misconceptions and errors!

As an exit ticket, you could give an example set you create and have students independently identify which one is solved incorrectly and why and justify their reasoning. This is a great way to hit on the math practice standard “critique the reasoning of others”. Here is an example of how this could look.

Which one is solved incorrectly?

Desmos Day of Exploration

 

I finally made a Desmos activity. It may not seem like that impressive of a feat to most people, but I have started and surrendered so many times. My teacher.desmos account is really a graveyard of whole hearted but half finished attempts. I never really knew whether it was a lack of desire or a lack of skill that prevented me from finishing the task but this week my inspiration to create the vision I had was through the roof and I was determined to make this work. 

And work it did. It was an incredible day. One of those days that feels almost illegal to not document or celebrate.

So cheers, to a completed Desmos activity and an instructional win full of student connections and exploration!

Students have been working with linear, quadratic, and absolute value functions with a focus on transformations from the parent function. Mix in a little systems of equations (graphing only right now) and here we are! I'll be honest, the actual creation of the activity was pretty easy. There are 4 challenges, each challenge with a clear set of requirements for the functions they had to write and a target intersection point. This was SUPER open ended which allowed for some rich comparison conversation and a lot of notice/wonder type whole class and group discussion. 

Teacher Dashboard View:

The really impactful part of this lesson was projecting the teacher dashboard view for students to see. There was such a wide variety of ways students completed each challenge and being able to quickly pull together different subsets of answers was really powerful.

Students were really engaged and motivated to figure out functions for each challenge. Creating the "need" for students to understand and use those transformations was really key. Even some of my more disengaged and less motivated students were finally asking me, "Hey Mrs. Bell, how do I make this thing go to the right? I am too far left." BEAUTIFUL... so let's talk about everything we've learned the last two weeks.... Better late than never! Maybe they just needed an actual reason to move their dang parabolas around finally!

Here are some awesome examples of each challenge and the functions students' created.

Student Work Challenge #1: 

Student Work Challenge #2: 

Student Work Challenge #3: 

Student Work Challenge #4:

Been hesitant to finally create that Desmos activity? Here is your push to do it. New things are hard. After a decade of teaching and plenty of Desmos specific training, I finally did it. Now is always the best time to push ourselves out of our comfort zone and grow as educators!