Writing in Math

I tried a new writing activity in class. (I have to admit, it was mainly because I knew the lesson was a little short and I would need to fill an extra 5 or 10 minutes) Anyway, I was actually pretty impressed with how it worked out. I'm starting a chapter on area and volume. The book immediately jumps to the area of parallelograms and trapezoids. Maybe your kids are different, but I knew mine would barely remember how to find the area of a rectangle or triangle so I thought we better spend a day reviewing those. Before we took notes, I had the kids fold a paper in half: hot-dog wise in case you're wondering :-) On the left side they had to answer 4 questions about area and perimeter - just so I could see what they remembered from last year. I gave them a couple minutes to write down what they knew and then had them set it aside. At the end of class, after taking notes and working on problems with a partner, I had them take the sheet back out and write down whether their original answers were correct. If not, they had to write down the correct answer. I just walked around the room collecting them - it was a super short and easy way to see which students understood the lesson and which ones still needed help. I think I might try it again . . .