Erase Limits and Embrace Mini Whiteboards

Erase Limits and Embrace Mini Whiteboards

Mini whiteboards are an effective way to engage your students in learning. Small dry erase boards have many cumulative benefits: they offer great potential to enhance student engagement, provide immediate and timely teacher feedback, and foster a collaborative learning environment.

At the heart of successful teaching strategy is student engagement. Mini whiteboards encourage active involvement from your students, prompting students to express their thoughts and ideas visibly. Students engagement increases; passive learning gives way to dynamic interaction between teacher and student.

One of the most significant advantages of mini whiteboards is the opportunity for immediate feedback. Teachers can quickly glance at students' whiteboards and single out misconceptions or errors instantly. This approach promotes real-time corrective actions.

Moreover, the use of mini whiteboards allows for students' understanding to be reviewed almost immediately. It works in this way: teachers pose a question or problem, students write their responses, teachers then quickly assess the students' grasp of the topic.

This speedy snapshot of student comprehension allows for the prompt adjustment or modification of instruction.

Erase Limits and Embrace Mini Whiteboards: Aligns with Principle of Instruction 

Greater student collaboration is another benefit of using mini whiteboards. Group work has the potential to be more inclusive. All students have equal opportunities to participate due to the immediacy of writing short responses on their whiteboards to share with others in the group.

This can result in greater opportunities for students in a group to participate in shared work and effort, which can encourage richer discussions, provide a boost to true collaborative practice while expanding students' oral expressive language skills.

In line with the Rosenshine Principles, the use of mini whiteboards effectively aids teachers who provide clear instructions delivered in small steps.

Clear instructions allows students sufficient time and practice to hone their written skills while responding to instruction in real time.

For teachers keen to explore science of learning teaching principles, the adoption and practice of using mini whiteboards, daily - in a well thought out strategic manner - can provide enormous benefits to your students' understanding of complex information and lead to greater engagement.

The beauty of mini whiteboards blooms when used in all subject areas. In key academic areas such as writing, math and science, mini whiteboards become an interactive platform for students to engage with a teacher's message and lead to greater understanding of complex subjects and topics.

Mini whiteboards become an increasingly valuable tool when contrasted to more traditional instruction scenarios. In a more common teacher led classroom exchange, teachers will tend to interact most with the outgoing, more vocal and confident students.

Shy or under-confident students will more likely not willingly engage in this type of classroom practice.

Erase Limits and Embrace Mini Whiteboards: Engaging Shy or Unconfident Students

The introduction of mini whiteboards can overcome this issue when combined with the practice of chin it.

This simple practice advocated by explicit instruction teachers, has students quickly write a response and then chinning their answer, which is simply placing their written responses under their chins for immediate teacher feedback and support.

The teacher can, in this instance, focus on particular students and provide immediate and corrective feedback.

Effective and timely feedback is one of the essential markers of impactful teaching. Immediate, detailed feedback quickly gleaned from a particular student's written response on a mini whiteboard not only show that student that his/her opinion is valued but also provides clear, constructive guidance on how to improve select skills.

Erase Limits and Embrace Mini Whiteboards: Better for the Environment 

From a cost perspective, mini whiteboards are a budget-friendly alternative to their technological counterparts such as iPads and desktop computers. Their affordability ensures that no student is left behind due to financial constraints.

Also, unlike other more technological and pricey learning platforms mini whiteboards have a specific and constrained use.

In contrast to this, iPads in particular can become a terrible distraction and can  lead to student's engaging in games and activities that have little to do with active learning.

In a time of increased energy shortages and climate change, an often overlooked added value of mini whiteboards is their sustainability. Mini whiteboards triumph as they eliminate a significant amount of paper usage and wastage and they don't require electricity to run.

Mini whiteboards utility for teaching and learning combined with a clear and irrefutable eco-friendly advantage makes these simple tools a wise investment for any educator.

Erase Limits and Embrace Mini Whiteboards: Summary

To sum up, mini whiteboards can act as an exceptional diagnostic tool to observe patterns and trends in student comprehension.

Over the course of an academic year, teachers with minimal preparation and finances can use these valuable tools to modify instruction to align with their students' strengths and weaknesses.

By making the simple adjustment of adding mini whiteboards into daily practice, teachers ensure both greater student engagement and, perhaps equally important, improve their own skills when teaching complex and difficult concepts and themes.

It's important to stress that above all, perhaps the most meaningful benefit of daily, effective mini whiteboard use is the confidence they instil in students.

Mini whiteboards offer a relatively anonymous way to share thoughts and offer answers, mitigating the fear of embarrassment as all students chin their responses simultaneously.

Mini whiteboards provide an invaluable tool to bolster student engagement, offer immediate feedback, promote collaborative learning, and much more.

Their use is in agreement with the Rosenshine Principles and appeals to an explicit style of teaching and ensures improved student engagement, which can only lead to improved student outcomes.

As a dedicated teacher, exploring new ways to enrich your teaching is a vital element of your profession. Embracing tools like mini whiteboards not only enhances your teaching strategies but also provides a greater opportunity for all of your students to shine.

Updated 01/2024