Bump It Up Walls in the Mathematics Classroom

Ok, so Bump It Up Walls (or Interactive Performance Boards) have been around in many school boards for a few years and we are seeing them in almost every classroom. Personally, I really like the idea of what a BIU wall can provide my students, as each level clearly shows students what a particular level of achievement looks like. Besides this, students actively engage in the classroom with this wall by developing and deconstructing an assignment's success criteria and learning goals in order to gain a better understanding of what each levelled exemplar has and/or does not have. Thus, at any given point while constructing an assignment, they can look back at the wall, success criteria, rubric, etc. to help figure out where their work currently is and formulate steps of how to "bump it up". Similarly, this serves as a great tool to help students assess their peers work to provide meaningful and transparent feedback. If you'd like more information about what a BIU wall is, or what it looks like, you can check out Stephanie Kennedy's video explaining her BUI wall and/or read Raine6's blog about them. 

The purpose for my blog post today is to shed light on a BIU issue that I have struggled with to date, and that is how to formulate a successful BIU wall in the Mathematics classroom. My background has typically provided me with opportunities to engage with BIU walls in Language, Art and Social Studies courses, as these disciplines encompass tasks that include formulated writing via reading comprehension, research skills, creativity, etc. Thus, providing levelled exemplars is as easy as having students assess success criteria (SC) and mark sample questions; gauging which parts of the SC are evident, and which are not. Math is a little more tricky with regard to this type of marking, as often students understand math answers as either "correct" or "incorrect", so how can we assign levels when the perception of math as a discipline is so black and white?

After some research on the internet, and viewing countless amounts of Math BIU walls online, I'm starting to get the impression that the focus for a levelled approach in Math is on the process and representation of student answers, much like the Social Sciences/Arts BIU walls, however, there is a stronger emphasis of how the answer is represented. For example, depending on the success criteria, students are often encouraged to solve a problem however they see fit and, therefore, the levelled approach is based on what how student demonstrates how/what they know as opposed to an answer being "correct or incorrect". Here is a neat example video from Pat Johnson, showing his grade 1's Math BIU wall.

For interests sake, here is a link to some Pintrest BIU wall exemplars!