Showing posts with label subtraction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label subtraction. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Laptops Take Over Fact Station

Student uses laptop during fact station

Laptops Transform Fact Station
This year Tabitha’s school purchased a classroom set of laptops for teachers to check out for their students.  We have always talked about how nice it would be to incorporate iPads or more individualized forms of technology at the game or fact stations, but money was the main obstacle.  This purchase caused Tabitha to be able to check out the laptops each day during math workshop.  She incorporated the laptops this week during fact station.  So far, students have used the laptops to play fact games such as Multiplication Grand Prix and other math games that build fact fluency.  To allow students easy access to these teacher-selected links, Tabitha linked the fact sites to her class website.  


Site used for fact practice


As this is still a novel change to the math workshop routine, we look forward to seeing the long-term impacts that this change has on student learning (mastery of basic facts) and engagement.  So far, however, Tabitha has noticed increased student motivation (engagement), resulting in easier management of student behavior during math workshop.  









Assessing Laptop Use Efficacy
So all these anecdotal assumptions about student learning are great, but where’s the proof (i.e. empirical evidence) that this change will lead to student learning?  Enter mobymax.com.   We are anxious to see its usefulness in the classroom.  The idea with having students use this site is that it will allow Tabitha to create student profiles→ students will play math games--> and the system will then track each student’s progress through the fact games-->the site provides Tabitha with data on student growth, and students can also view their progress.  Did we mention that the games are aligned with Common Core!?  Double yeah!  So, the hope is that Tabitha will be able to seamlessly implement this resource, via the laptops, during fact station.  

Student profiles reveal progress

We'll keep you posted! 

T&C

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Time, Money, +, -

Here are a few anchor charts from the past few weeks:

We loved our time unit this week! One of the great resources provided by Everyday Math is the Game book.  This week we used three games: Match Time, Time Concentration, and Prize Time.  Prize Time involves assigning each student a time on their desk.  If they come to you at their assigned time, then they can get a prize.  What a cool way to motivate them to learn time! 

We loved teaching Change from $5.00 after subtraction this year.  It went so smoothly.  We saw huge growth at the end of the week, with 24/27 students scoring proficient on the exit slip!



Math Notebook Entries:

Each student has a math notebook that we add to on Mondays during whole-class instruction.  This is when we make our anchor charts (as seen above). Students copy down their version of the class anchor chart in their notebook.  We both like the organization that the Table of Contents provides. 
We created a blank template for the printable mini- Frayer Model charts for the weeks that the headings change.

But then some weeks it just takes less time for the students to write if we provide the headings...




Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Estimation, Math Notebooks, and Anchor Charts

This week we are teaching estimation by rounding to the nearest 10 and to the nearest 100, CCSS 3.NBT.1.  

On Monday, we created this anchor chart with our classes:

We also watched Brainpop!'s Rounding video and stopped before the Rounding Decimals part.

Students copied the anchor chart into their notebook onto their Frayer model anchor chart:

We also felt that it would help students to have a hundred chart with rounding tips, so they glued this chart from Super Teacher Worksheets into their notebook for this week, too.


Switching Groups Mid-Week

For the first time since starting math workshop, we changed our four math groups mid-week this week. We noticed certain students in the lowest group grasping estimation quicker than students in the low-medium group.  Based on yesterday's closure activity and in-class observations at the teacher station, we swapped some students between the red (lowest) and yellow (low-medium) groups.  For example, Johnny was in the red group but was catching on quicker than Suzy in the yellow group, so we switched the two.  Today, Suzy received more support during teacher station because her peers were at the same instructional level. This change emphasized to us how important ongoing assessment and closure are to driving instructional decisions. This is truly differentiated instruction.

Another Math Workshop Board


Anchor charts from the year so far...






Join us next week for a Q & A with a guest blogger, a fourth grade teacher starting math workshop this year! :) 

--Tabitha & Chloe

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Anchor Charts!!!

What teacher doesn't love anchor chart ideas?! Okay, maybe not as much as we do, but thanks to http://pinterest.com/, we have acquired many useful ideas for anchor charts.  We normally create these as a class on Monday during whole-class instruction.  We usually watch a Brainpop video to help us fill out the chart.

So our gift to you in this post is....drum roll please...a ton of anchor charts!!







Enjoy!