Guest post by Allie Beldin @Alliebeldin
Let me start off by saying when I tried this activity with my students this past week, they have been asking me every day to give them MORE Math practice… I thought I was dreaming. I heard that using pixel art motivates students to practice their skills, but I did not realize how quickly it worked. I tried this activity with my remote and in-person sixth-grade Math students and realized that this was an activity that could also be used for skill differentiation and classroom management. You will need to log in to your Google account and go to Google Sheets to see how this works. The free template can be found at the end of this post. See what the activity looks like in action in the video below!
For a differentiated activity, create a Google sheet with three tabs at the bottom. Label each tab “level 1,” “level 2,” and “EXPERT level”. Students will want to find the mystery picture for each level to reach expert level.
To help with your classroom management, tell your students that each week you will be picking a student of the week. When they complete the pixel art activity, you could use the student of the week’s name as the mystery picture!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/pP4V3w6c1eo?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparentHow to Add Your Own Questions to the Template
https://www.youtube.com/embed/zj7D94PNSl0?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparentHow to Change the Mystery Picture on the Template
If you want to create your very own mystery pixel art activity from scratch in less than ten minutes, watch the video below. Before learning how to create this activity, I had hardly any experience with conditional formatting on sheets. At first, I thought making this activity would be too overwhelming, but I quickly realized you only had to know use one “formula” on Google Sheets.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/yIuVBCQbKFo?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparentHow to Create This Activity from SCRATCH
Do not forget when you are adding your own questions and you are using words as answers you will have to put quotations around the words in the formula. If your answer is just a number, you will not have to use quotations in the formula.
If you would like the free template for this activity click here!
Learning as I go: Experiences, reflections, lessons learned 