Screencasting to Support Effective Teaching Practices

Increasing availability of digital devices in elementary school classrooms presents exciting new opportunities for teachers to support the teaching and learning of mathematics. Although many of the math applications available for these devices focus on drill and practice of mathematical procedures, screencasting apps can help support effective teaching practices that promote problem solving and deeper learning of elementary mathematics.

To support and facilitate student learning of meaningful mathematics, Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All (NCTM 2014) articulates a research-informed framework of effective teaching and learning practices, guided by six principles. Here, we explore three vignettes of practice that highlight affordances of screencasting applications in alignment with the NCTM Tools and Technology Principle, which states,

These vignettes specifically relate to the three Effective Teaching and Learning Practices (NCTM 2014) identified and described in table 1.

What is screencasting?

Screencasting captures audio from those using the app as well as video of what is written or presented on the screen. Popular screencasting apps and online tools, such as ShowMe®, Educreations, Explain Everything®, ScreenChomp®, Knowmia®, and others, provide interactive whiteboard tools for tablets, with the added capabilities of importing images, documents, and other objects. The resulting video has the potential to document the process of what students write and say as they engage in mathematical problem solving. Screencasting tools present an opportunity to leverage technology for communicating mathematics and capturing students’ mathematical process rather than just their written product—capabilities that open up a variety of opportunities. This article highlights how screencasting might be leveraged for teaching and learning mathematics in classrooms that differ in terms of their access to technology, classrooms with (1) a single teacher tablet or device, (2) shared devices for students, and (3) one-to-one devices for each student.

Screencasting with a teacher device

The first vignette describes how a kindergarten teacher with limited technology access uses screencasting to facilitate mathematical discourse in a lesson focused on decomposing the number 5. The following description, discussion excerpt, and photos of student work illustrate how Mrs. Lester uses screencasting on a single mobile device to support student learning.

In Lester’s kindergarten classroom, children work at their seats with colored counters to decompose the number 5 into number combinations to later be connected with addition equations. Student desks are arranged in groups of four, but students begin the task working individually. Each child receives a tray of manipulatives, counts out five, and then uses his or her “break-apart stick” to decompose 5 into two addends. As Lester monitors students’ work, she asks those who are finished to compare their work with a neighbor’s. She notices an interesting conversation between two students, Andre and Bailey. Lester uses her tablet to take a photo of Andre’s (see fig. 1) and Bailey’s (see fig. 2) manipulatives and uploads those photos as backgrounds in the screencasting app.

She also asks Andre and Bailey if they would be willing to share their reasoning with everyone, a useful opportunity to engage the class in thinking about the commutative property of addition. When the class transitions to a whole-class discussion, Lester opens the file with Andre’s work, wirelessly displays her tablet screen on the classroom projector, and hands the tablet to Andre at his seat. The following is an excerpt from the discussion that follows:

Teacher: Andre, can you explain what you did?

Andre: [Using his finger, he points to and marks each tile in the picture as he counts.] Well, I had five, and I put my break-apart stick after the first one. So, I have one and then one, two, three, four.

Teacher: OK, did everyone hear Andre’s explanation? He said that he put the break-apart stick after the first tile, so he had one and four. Andre, can you tell us the addition equation that goes with your picture?

Andre: One plus four [writing with his finger on the screen, (seefig. 1)] equals five.

Teacher: Andre wrote one plus four equals five. Can someone explain how the picture of Andre’s work proves one plus four equals five?

Callie: In his picture, he has one before the break-apart stick and four after it; and altogether, there’s five of them, so one plus four equals five.

Teacher: Thank you. Now Andre, I heard you and Bailey talking about how your work was the same and how it was different. Bailey, will you tell us about what you did? Andre, please pass the iPad® to Bailey; and Bailey, press the arrow at the top of your screen to get to the picture of your work.

Bailey: Well, I said mine was different from Andre because I had four tiles, and then I put my break-apart stick, and there was one after it.

Teacher: OK, so you’re saying that you broke apart the five and had four and one. How is that different from what Andre did?

Bailey: Well, Andre had one and four, but I had four and one—so they aren’t the same thing.

Teacher: Is there another way you could represent the difference between what Andre and Bailey did? Anyone? Dan? Bailey, will you hand the iPad® to Dan, please?

Dan: Andre had one and four, which was one plus four equals five [pointing at Andre’s addition equation and work, then scrolling to Bailey’s work], but Bailey had four and one, so the equation is four plus one equals five [writing the addition equation on the picture of Bailey’s work (seefig. 2)].

Teacher: I see. So Dan just explained two addition equations for Andre’s and Bailey’s pictures. But Andre, when I was at your table, you thought that they were the same. Can you explain what you meant by that?

Andre: I think that they are the same, kind of, because mine is one plus four and Bailey’s is four plus one, and they are the same numbers that both equal five [scrolling between the two images and pointing at the screen to provide visual support for his argument].

Screencasting supports Lester in facilitating mathematical discourse by displaying images of students’ approaches with manipulatives for analysis and comparison. Much like an interactive whiteboard, projecting images of student work from the screencasting app allows students to refer and add to their own work, while explaining their thinking to the rest of the class. When wireless projection is available,the portability of the tablet also allows students to present from their seat, which some teachers and students might find preferable.

Screencasting with shared student devices

In this second vignette, Mr. Flint’s second graders share devices as they use and connect mathematical representations and strategies for subtraction with two-digit numbers. The following description and examples of student work illustrate how he incorporates screencasting to prompt and facilitate small-group discussions and to support his own implementation of the five practices for orchestrating productive mathematics discussion (Stein and Smith 2011).

Flint’s second-grade class has six tablets to share among twenty-four students. Before class, he prepared six short screencasts that demonstrate strategies and representations for subtracting two-digit numbers. At the beginning of class, he poses the following subtraction problem to students:

Flint asks students to solve the problem on their individual whiteboards. He circulates around the room to view students’ responses and strategies. While he observes students’ strategies and representations, he selects students to work together in groups of four. Each group receives a tablet and is instructed to open the screencasting app and choose a file that Flint prepared before class (see fig. 3).

Each group watches the screencast video that shows and explains how a fictitious student represented and reasoned about the same subtraction problem that students had just solved. Students can watch, pause, and review the video files that the teacher prepared, and they are able to not only see the fictitious student’s representations but also hear the verbal explanation for those representations and problem-solving strategies. Each group is asked to make sense of the representation and strategy described in the video and to evaluate the accuracy of its results.

After all groups have watched and discussed their assigned video, Flint transitions the class back to a whole-group discussion during which each group describes and justifies the representation shown in their video. Before class, Flint had already decided on the sequence of videos that would best meet the mathematical goals of the lesson. As groups explain their video’s representation, the rest of the class is asked to compare the video’s representations to what they did individually to solve the problem. At the conclusion of the discussion, Flint assesses students’ understanding by asking the class to solve a different subtraction problem using a representation of their choice.

Flint’s screencasts encourage students to use and connect mathematical representations. Particularly for early-career teachers or those who are new to discourse-rich mathematics classrooms, this use of screencasts allows for purposeful selection and sequencing of representations in advance, rather than more in-the-moment decisions that may be challenging and unpredictable. The use of screencasting in this vignette also ensures that students have the opportunity to consider a wide variety of representations, which may or may not have emerged from students’ own solution strategies.

Screencasting with one-to one student devices

The third vignette includes examples of student work and an account of screencasting in Ms. Hernandez’s third-grade classroom. Every student has his or her own school-issued tablet. In a lesson focused on multiplication story problems, screencasts serve as a tool for eliciting and using evidence of student thinking.

Hernandez teaches in a school that invested in tablets for each student. The school had purchased new printed textbooks two years earlier, and teachers tend to use their curriculum resources daily. Administrators encourage teachers to integrate the devices with the existing print curriculum as often as possible. Hernandez decides to enhance the curriculum materials with an extension activity focused on multiplication. She uses screencasting as a way to capture individual students’ mathematical reasoning and processes.

Hernandez’s class has been learning about multiplication through story problems. She begins her lesson by asking students to individually make up a story problem that can be solved using one-digit multiplication and then solve the problem on their whiteboard. She notices that some students accurately write and solve their multiplication problems but document only the multiplication equation. Other students draw pictures to help them solve the problem but do not connect the picture with a multiplication equation.

Hernandez decides to use screencasting to gather more evidence about students’ solution strategies. She displays her screen to the class and demonstrates how to write, draw, and record in the screencasting app. After this introduction to the technology, Hernandez invites students to spend a few minutes exploring and familiarizing themselves with the screencasting app. She asks them to type their story problems into the screencasting app. As students work, Hernandez circulates around the room to ensure that problems do indeed involve multiplication and that they are appropriate and accessible to students. She then instructs students to press record in the screencasting app and solve the problem using whatever strategy makes the most sense. She encourages students to draw pictures, diagrams, or equations, and she emphasizes how important it is for them to explain their reasoning aloud as they work. Students are asked to stop recording and save their videos when they are finished (see figs. 4 and 5).

When all students have finished solving their multiplication story problems and have saved their videos, Hernandez explains and demonstrates how to upload the videos to the class YouTube™ channel. Students are then asked to view a peer’s screencast and comment with one question or constructive suggestion for the screencast’s author. Referring to Kalyn’s work (see fig. 4), a peer asks, “How do you know this is a multiplication problem? Because it looks like you used addition to solve it.” During this exercise, students are “asking questions, responding to, and giving suggestions to support the learning of their classmates” (NCTM 2014, p. 56).

After class, the teacher views students’ screencasts. Although she monitored and checked students’ story problems and solution strategies during class, she is now able to see and hear students’ full solution strategies and explanations. For instance, she finds that although Zara’s written solution appears to indicate a known fact, Zara used skip counting by twos to arrive at her solution. As she designs instruction for the following lesson, she incorporates students’ strategies from the screencasts.

Hernandez uses screencasting to elicit evidence of student thinking. The screencast tool provides teachers with unique insight as to students’ reasoning, offering evidence of not only the product of students’ understanding but also their processes. Because many screencast tools facilitate easy sharing of files, screencasts not only provide teachers with a record of students’ reasoning but also give students the opportunity to self-assess their own progress, respond to the reasoning of others, and reflect on misconceptions or different ways of thinking. The evidence of student thinking that teachers can elicit from screencasting can be used to formatively assess and adjust instruction during instruction or to plan instruction for subsequent lessons.

Extensions and other applications

These three vignettes highlight possibilities for using screencasting to support specific teaching and learning practices as described in Principles to Actions (NCTM 2014). Additional uses of screencasting in elementary school mathematics classrooms include collecting evidence and artifacts of student work for portfolios and parent-teacher conferences, formatively assessing student learning, “flipping” the classroom, and documenting students’ project-based work. Screencasting is also a strategic tool for supporting and assessing the Common Core’s (CCSSI 2010) Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMP). Consider, for instance, how screencasting might support students as they engage in the following practices: SMP 4, Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others, or SMP 2, Reason abstractly and quantitatively.

Enhancing lessons even with limited technology

Expanding student access to powerful digital tools presents new and exciting opportunities for teaching mathematics, but even when access to technology is limited, screencasting on a single device can enhance elementary mathematics lessons. These three vignettes of screencasting offer examples of how digital tools can support effective practices in a variety of elementary school mathematics classrooms. In general, technology can and should be used to amplify current mathematical goals and practices, such as facilitating communication, presenting new ideas, and documenting student reasoning. When elementary school teachers use screencasting strategically, they support the Tools and Technology guiding principle “to help students make sense of mathematics, engage in mathematical reasoning, and communicate mathematically” (NCTM 2014, p. 78).

Common Core State Standards Initiative (CCSSI). 2010. Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM). Washington, DC: National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. http://www.corestandards.org/wp-content/uploads/Math_Standards.pdf

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). 2014. Principles to Action: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All. Reston, VA: NCTM.

Stein, Mary Kay, and Margaret Schwan Smith.2011. 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions. Reston, VA: National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.

Van De Walle, John A., Karen S. Karp, and Jennifer M. Bay-Williams. 2016. Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally. 9th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.