Creating posters in the mathematics classroom

Barbara Breedon, Dromore High School

Ken Houston, University of Ulster

Introduction

The poster is a powerful medium of communication. Society uses posters in a variety of ways to advertise, to persuade, to inform, to teach, to warn. Schools can purchase commercially produced mathematics posters that can be used in the classroom or corridor. Once posted they are a constant reminder to passers-by of some interesting piece of information. Posters and display boards are used at Open Days, Career Conventions and at conferences where participants can present their work and read about other people’s work.

In higher education posters are used in a wide variety of disciplines as a medium for communication and assessment. For example, at the University of Ulster, final year students of computing and engineering hold "project days" when they display a poster summarising their project and when they explain their project to lecturers, other students and examiners. First year students of mathematics report their project work at a poster session at the end of term.

Preparing a poster and presenting and defending it at a poster session encourages a pupil to speak, write and visualise mathematics. We are suggesting that poster creation is a good, alternative, way of encouraging mathematical learning and beside, our pupils and students have found it to be a enjoyable activity. One pupil said "It makes it like fun to do mathematics". Furthermore poster activities help develop language skills and social skills.

Because the space available for presenting information is limited, poster creators have to think carefully about what is most important and to make sure these things are included. Also it is widely recognised that if a person is required to explain something or to teach something to another person, then this requirement promotes more thorough understanding on the part of the first person.

In this paper we discuss briefly our experiences with two groups of pupils in Knockbreda High School. One activity was with a Year 8 class wherein we asked pupils to create instructional posters. The other was with a Year 11 class and in this case the pupils reported on an investigation they had carried out.

In order to get pupils to focus on what they were doing, it was decided that the posters should be formatively assessed by the teacher, other teachers and other pupils in the class. A discussion was held with each class about the good and bad features of a poster and an agreed list of assessment criteria (see appendix) were drawn up for each class. Clearly these criteria are a description, in check list form, of a good poster and so are also intended to be used by pupils to self-assess their own work before they present it. To help in this discussion, posters produced by a previous cohort (without instruction) and some commercially produced posters were available to study and criticise. The discussion concentrated on three things - the language used, the mathematics depicted and the layout and presentation.

Year 8 pupils creating instructional posters

In this study, pupils were asked to create an instructional poster on some aspect of the topic "fractions". After the class had studied fractions for a few weeks and had been tested on it, they were asked to work in self selected small groups to prepare a poster on a selected sub topic which would explain that topic to others. All posters were displayed in class for the rest of the year to act as "reminders" to the class.

At the poster session, each poster was judged by the class teacher (Barbara Breedon) two other teachers and five pupils. The three teachers judged all of the posters and each pupil judged two of them. There was a good measure of agreement between the rank order produced by the whole group assessment and that produced by the "expert" judge, the class teacher. Statistical analysis also identified the small number of pupils whose judgements were away out of line and thus provided opportunity for further discussion with these pupils.

Many of the posters indicated good work and sound understanding on the part of their authors, but some pupils displayed a lack of understanding and misconceptions. It was good to have this brought to light at this time so that remedial action could be taken. The test mentioned above had not identified these weaknesses.

The activity helped develop team working, or at least helped pupils to realise the sorts of things that make team working difficult. Throughout the activity pupil motivation and enthusiasm were high. There was some shyness at the oral defence of the poster but pupils realised that the activity would help them to overcome this and to increases their own self confidence. Teaching colleagues in the school suggested that the activity "was very beneficial in reinforcing coursework", that it "made pupils learn how to participate, plan and co-operate in a group", and it "made maths ‘fun’ for the pupils".

Year 11 pupils using posters for communication

During Year 11 pupils carry out practice coursework investigations in preparation for GCSE coursework tasks and assessment. The pupils in the case study (all in the bottom quartile of the cohort ability range), after they had individually completed a coursework task, were asked to work in small groups to produce a poster which explained the findings of their investigation.

Preparation for the poster activity was as before and included a critique of other posters and a discussion of the assessment criteria. (The agreed list for this class was similar to, but slightly different from) the list in the appendix developed for the Year 8 class). Each poster was presented on not more than two sheets of card measuring 52 cm x 64 cm. The class was small (17), there were four posters and each poster was assessed by the class teacher and by all the other pupils.

Most of the pupils in the class were well motivated and enthusiastic; they produced posters which gave clear descriptions of their work and they also gave a sound oral defence of their poster. Some of the pupils, however, were not so well motivated and did not attend the group work sessions. Needless to say their posters were of a poor quality and they gained little for the activity.

Conclusion

The experience with both Year 8 and Year 11 pupils suggests that creating a poster requires a high level of understanding on the part of the pupil. The activity provides an opportunity for the teacher to delve deeply.

The positive feedback highlights the capacity of this activity to motivate and stimulate enthusiasm. We advocate the adoption of our strategy even if only as an end-of-term activity. Not only do pupils have to think about, read, write and discuss mathematics, they are developing social skills and language skills.

Peer assessment was received positively and was considered a useful activity to engage in, but not for summative assessment purposes - pupils are still very inexperienced assessors. It is useful because it makes pupils think about the good and bad features of a poster and should encourage them to produce a higher standard in this own work next time.

Acknowledgement

This work is the basis of Barbara Breedon’s MSc thesis "Pupils Using Posters", University of Ulster, 1996.

Name: ___________________________________ Group Assessed: _________