Solving Word Problems in 1st Grade

A few blog posts ago I posted about a First Grade class solving addition and subtraction math problems using digital manipulatives. Well, just an update-- another 1st Grade teacher and her students used the same template and the results were just as great! Our concern was that students might have trouble using the "duplicate" tool to make the correct number of manipulatives, however students picked this up much quicker than we had thought! Students were able to log into See Saw, download a template, solve about 6 math problems (duplicating items when needed), recording themselves reading the number sentence and then exporting into See Saw all within a 35 minute time block! So proud of this teacher and her students! Here are a few work samples:

Number Sentences Using Number line App

This past week two second grade teachers that I work with told me that they want to use more technology in stations. We have been trying a few things but they really didnt "stick." In planning, these teachers told me that they were using an "open number line" to solve addition, subtraction, and now multi-step problems. Immediately I suggested that they use the "Number Line" app. To be honest, this app always intimated me for some reason! There are a lot of components to the app, however it was always a turn of to me. However, this year it was going to be a different story! The teachers wanted to use it with their students so I was determined to learn it!

Before we rolled out any math problems with the students, we gave them 5 minutes to explore the app all on their own. Trust me, if you saw the interface of the app, there are a lot of buttons that you can press to do different things! We wanted students to see what everything did! I think this really paid off because once the teacher rolled out the problems, the thirst for curiosity was minimal. Here are a few pictures of the activity that we did. (Number Sentences using Addition.)

Hold Your Horses! 1st Grade Addition and Subtraction Word Problems!

Wow! I cannot stop bragging on one of my 1st Grade Teachers! I wish this teacher was on Twitter so that I could brag on her! On Monday, I got to meet with my Math Instructional Coach to see "what's coming up." She had told me that this week and next week 1st graders would be solving addition and subtraction word problems. Sure enough, later that day I went into the 1st Grade Teacher's Classroom to see her and her students using the markers to draw on their table. To help get the teacher more comfortable using technology we co-taught this lesson together. I made her a template in explain everything and she taught the content. Fair trade!! Students were so engaged! While the template looks pretty easy, it was anything but! For the addition problems, students were only given 1 item and had to used the "duplicate" feature in Explain Everything to make the proper copies they needed. For subtraction, items were given to them and they had to cross them out. It was fun to hear the responses of the kids when they "turned the page" to the next problem! What item would they see? A puppy? Oreo Cookies? Goldfish???

We had a few "fast finishers" which asked to record their work once finished! Eventually, everyone finished and were able to record!

Check out the example below:

Using "Copy and Edit" in SeeSaw in 3rd Grade Math

I started using Smart Goals with my staff this month. I got the idea from Ms. Boone- she uses it on her campus and it is an excellent way to help grow staff! Anyways, the Smart Goal that I gave to this 3rd Grade Math teacher was to use the "copy and edit" tool in SeeSaw. The way Smart Goals work on my campus is that I give them a tool or app to explore- they will have 1 month to use that tool on their own. If they need assistance, I will certainly help them! Once they meet their Smart Goal I will make them a certificate in which they can post outside their door to show everyone that their goal was met.

Anyways, in planning, the teacher told me that she had an idea that she wanted to use with "making arrays." She put together this Google Doc in which there were a few arrays in which students could download and insert into Explain Everything via a QR code. As far as the content (multiplication) went, she used the "Copy and Edit" feature in SeeSaw to help explain this type of concept. This was actually big news because she was the first one in our district to use this feature! The cool thing about it was the fact that she just dove right into using this tool and was like, "Well, if this is my Smart Goal, I am just going to do it!" Once the student copies the image, it will automatically copy into their portfolio in which they can then annotate, record and type on! Congrats to this teacher! So proud of you!!

Here is an example of an item that was copied and pasted from the teacher.

 

Here are examples of a finished product:

 

Who Said Learning Can't Be Fun??

Wow! These past two weeks of school have been incredible! All of the teachers that I work with regularly are coming to me with things that they want to do in their classroom! It's been non-stop since we came back, but I really enjoy the busyness of it all!

The first activity came from 5th grade. She was set on doing Word Sorts on the iPad. This was something she started doing last year and wanted to start the year with this year. She just started exploring padlet (Pictures / Screenshots will come soon) in which she praised it by saying, "It gives every student a voice to share how the really feel about the text without verbally saying it in front of an audience."

 

The next activity was in 1st Grade. This teacher had a big vision of her students recording their voice over images snapped in Explain Everything.  This particular teacher was really nervous to do an activity because it was their first digital learning activity in her career! I wanted to do something simple such learn the basics of Pic Collage, etc, however the only way we could do what she wanted to do was with the Explain Everything app. After quite a few planning sessions, motivational talks, etc we co-taught and pulled it off! We both thought it was a good idea to teach the student the app first before using it with her content so that is what we had focused on. In partners, students had to create a new file, take pictures of each other, type in their name, record their voice saying their name, re-editing the audio if needed, then saved / exported it out to Google Drive! Mind, you these are 1st Grade students and they did it all! The teacher was so relieved when we were done! We gave each other high 5's as a celebration of her first lesson! Such a proud moment!

Next we had a 3rd Grade Math Teacher who also had her first technology integrated lesson today! I had been wanting to work with this teacher last year however our schedules never really worked out. This year however, she is on our digital learning team and will be using technology on a regular basis!  She wanted her students to compose / decompose numbers in Pic Collage. We co-taught the lesson for 1st period and for 2nd and 3rd period she did it all on her own with me just floating around the room! She really found this activity engaging and challenging for her students! 

 

Our last activity for the day was a Google Hangout. My Science Teacher told me that she really wanted to beef up using technology in Science. We talked about doing a video chat with another school in our district. We found another 4th grade teacher that was willing to do this with us! Collaboratively, we came up with the questions students wanted to ask, however something was lacking. After talking it over with the other Digital Learning Coach, we thought it would raise the impact of the lesson if students could collaboratively work on a Padlet to identify various safe / unsafe behaviors in the Science Lab! He created about 8 Padlets in which we then placed on our website. Students would navigate over to the Padlet and we would go over the question together. Once we went over the question, students would respond. Once finished, students would chat with each other in the hangout and discuss their results! Oh yeah-- I failed to mention-- my Science teacher invited 2 other Science Teachers  + their kids into her classroom! So instead of 20 students, we had about 60! The kids behaved so well! We were all impressed! We plan on doing many more of these soon!

 

 

 

 

Word Problems in Full Swing!

A few weeks back my First Grade teacher started on an endeavor to have students make word problems on their own, in stations. We first started out by having students color backgrounds / pictures on paper and from there drawing pictures going along with their theme. When we started doing this, we really enjoyed the final product, however, we noticed that the process was taking a little bit longer than expected. Wanting to make this activity a success, I found some really good deals on scrapbook paper and stickers at Hobby Lobby. Typically I never go into craft stores, but I wanted the students to go above and beyond on this!

Once I gave the materials back to the teacher, she taught her students how to duplicate, lasso, and group items in Explain Everything. Students then had to write out their own math sentence out and record themselves solving the problems.

A First for Fourth (Plickers)

On the way to my car last week, I was stopped by my 4th grade teacher in which she asked me what Plickers were all about. I explained to her that it was a formative assessment tool that involved scannable  cards. Today she had the opportunity to try them out for the very first time! I am new to this type of assessment tool myself so I was learning right along with the teacher. She set up her questions within the website and used the Plickers App to scan the audience's cards. In case you dont know, Plickers are cards that students hold- to indicate answer choices, they have to rotate the card various ways. Long story short, we literally had to pry the cards away from students cause they were so engaged! I am hoping she can use them again soon! Again, this was the first time that they used this tool and they were really hooked! Students were begging for more math problems!! We were able to interview a student and get her feedback as well! (See below.)

 

1st Grade Word Problem Creation

One of the main focuses that one of my 1st Grade Teachers has been working on is student self-generated tasks. Students in this class are really comfortable using technology and she wants to challenge them to where students do all of the work on their own with minimal support from the teacher. Yesterday we started on that journey in which students had to create math problems and number sentences.  Students learned how to use the "duplicate" and the "group" tool in Explain Everything to maximize efficiency. We worked in stations for about 30 solid minutes, two days straight. Here is one of the student samples. I'll be posting more in the days to come.

Real Life Application with Angles

Every so often I have the chance to work with teachers who do not use technology in their classrooms on a regular basis. Today was one of those days! This particular teacher is extremely passionate about her students as well as their learning environment. This particular lesson was previously done in a different classroom but the teacher was still covering the same unit. Students were learning about measuring and identifying angles. For this activity, the teacher was presenting her lesson via a Nearpod. Students had to try and figure out what the measurement of the angle was by using a protractor. (Side note- protractor and iPads really dont play nicely together, but we made it work!) Long story short, I showed this teacher the basics of how Nearpod worked and she did the rest! She loved having "absolute control" over the other iPads! The students worked in partners and were really engaged. I was so proud of her and her class for taking a risk!

Converting in the Real World

About a week and a half ago I talked to my 5th Grade Math Teacher about what was coming up and to see if technology might play a role in it. She had mentioned that she was in the middle of unit conversions.  We spent a while trying to come up with an activity that would both challenge the student as well as be "real world." After coming up with a couple of ideas that were pretty blasé, we both had an idea and really built on it! The teacher had decided that she wanted to break her classroom up into multiple stations that had various types of real world unit conversions. For instance, in one station, she had a gallon of Chic-Fil-A tea (emptied) in which students would have to find the number of Liters and convert it to Milliliters. Another station included a center in which students had to go to Google Maps and get the distance between our campus and NRG Stadium and covert it from Kilometers to Meters! In a group, students would have to convert the items and then put them into Pic Collage. Students would rotate to different stations when they finished converting their items. The first time we did this activity, things didnt go quite as planned, however, we talked during break and made a few adjustments. By the time the afternoon group rolled around, things went much more smoothly and it was really clicking with the students! It was so great to see students use "real world" items to help transform the learning!

Fun With Lines in 4th Grade

My 4th Grade teacher is awesome! During our planning meetings, she tells me things like "I want to do things other than "substitution" with my technology activities." (Referring to the SAMR Model.) For this particular unit, students were learning about lines, line segments, points, etc. When talking with her, she wanted to take her students outside and have them explore and take pictures of lines, segments, etc. However, due to the absolute frigid  43 degree weather we were having, we decided to let the kids explore inside the school for these items. Once they had taken the pictures they were to put them into pic collage to organize them. Once they did that, they would come back to the classroom and app-mash it with Thing Link.  My teacher did an excellent job of putting together a rubric together for the students in which they were able to take with them on their exploration so that they can know what to expect. She also did a great job of fielding any questions that students had before getting started!

After students got their snaps, they started putting these images into ThingLink in which they had to answer 2 questions about what their line was and why they named it that particular line. Just to set the stage, the teacher and I had both been talking about how we can ask more "open ended questions" to get more out of the students. We tried that approach today and boy was there a noticeable difference one the ball got rolling! To be quite honest, there was a lot of "awkward silence" when she started asking these types of questions, however this teacher kept probing until she got the answer she was looking for! Her questions were so good that you had students going to the board (on their own!) to justify why they named their line what they did!