Using Bitstrips To Create Interactive Comic Math Problems

Recently, I have been working with staff on integrating Bitstrips For Schools into their classrooms. Most of the ideas that were discussed involved using Bitstrips for literacy, social studies, history, health, and even science. However, math never really entered the discussion. So I searched the shared math activities that were posted by other teachers on the Bitstrips For Schools website and only found a total of eight activities. All of these activities consisted of instructions for students to create their own comics. Here is an example of a shared activity that was posted:

Grades: 6-8, Subjects: Mathematics

Create a 3 panel strip to explain how to calculate the area of a triangle and/or parallelogram.

This particular application of Bitstrips is more of an assignment which focuses on students creating a product based on a set task. However, I thought that this program could also be used to create comics based on math word problems. In addition, these comics could be interactive as well due to a feature in Bitstrips that allows students to take an existing comic, ‘re-mix’ it, and save it as a separate comic.

The following is a primary algebra word problem:

Mr. Ro gave a handful of jelly beans to Jonah and to Sam. When they counted them Jonah had 3 red and 2 green and Sam had 5 red and 4 green. They realized one of them had more than the other. What could they do to make sure each had the same number of jelly beans? Justify your answer.

I took this word problem and turned it into the comic below:

In, I could share this comic as an activity and assign it to my class so that when they log in it would show up in their ‘Activities’ section. The students would then ‘re-mix’ the comic and rearrange the jelly beans, type their justifications in the caption boxes, and save it as their own comic. Teachers and students could also provide feedback on each others comics via the commenting feature. I could see students creating their own interactive math comic problems as well and sharing with the rest of the class to solve.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this idea. I have shared this activity in the Bitstrips For School shared activity section for teachers. Please try it out and let me know how it works out for you.

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