Quadramas as a Reflection Tool

I am so excited about our second Bright Ideas Blog Hop! We have over 180 participants this time around, all with a fantastic idea on their blogs! Get your paper and pencil ready for all of the great ideas you are about to find!

This month my “Bright Idea” is using quadramas as a reflection tool. Giving students the opportunity to reflect on their learning and develop metacognition is so important. But, reflection worksheets can get tiring. This post will show you how can use quadramas, a very hands-on project, as a reflection tool.

I have used quadramas with my students for many different purposes – reading response activities, research presentation, etc. For this example I created a quadrama about the four operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Each quadrant represents a different operation and gives students an opportunity to reflect. As you can see, each quadrant involves key words, an explanation of when the operation should be used, equations, and two story problems. This would be great to use at the end of a unit on any topic; the four operations is just one example where it can be used.

Below are the instructions for making a quadrama:

Begin with 4 pieces of cardstock paper. I love using different colors to brighten it up, but plain white looks great too!

Next, each piece needs to be cut into a perfect square. To do this, fold the paper as shown below, and cut off the bottom rectangle.

When you unfold the piece of paper after cutting, you will get a nice square.

Each square will already have one crease in it from the previous fold, but we need a crease going the other way as well. Fold the square in half like this to make the next crease:

When you unfold you will see two distinct creases.

Now you need to cut on one of the creases, just to the middle of the square:

Now, you layer the flaps one on top of the other to make one “quadrant.”

You will need to glue one flap to the other so that the quadrant stays set up; HOWEVER, it is important to do your decorating first, as it is much easier to do before your quadrama is put together.

When you are finished decorating one quadrant, glue the flap down so that is stands up like this:

Once all four quadrants have been created, they can be glued together to form the quadrama:

Here is a view from the top:

As I mentioned before, these are such great projects for any topic! For reading response, you could have students make one quadrant for characters, one for setting, one for the plot, and one for reactions to the story. For an animal research you could have the four quadrants represent habitat, diet, predators, and interesting facts. A fun way for students to present their knowledge on any topic!

And now, to continue our blog hop! Jamie from 2nd grade stuff is next! Be sure to check out her awesome organization post about avoiding stacks of paper by clicking HERE or on the button below. If you would prefer to search the blog hop by topic, please use the link-up down below.

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