Decimal modeling for multiplication is just plain bizarre on the eyeballs of many 5th graders (and their parents...and their teachers!) In order to help make it a bit more understandable, we 'colored' our own number sentences using Nearpod. I still have a handful of confused people, but I *think* fewer than usual following this lesson. Yay, Nearpod!
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Last year, our class charged with lap tracking for the Marathon Kids research study. While the logging drove me halfway-batty, the actual pedometers were a pretty cool motivator for kids. In hopes of inspiring this year's batch, I hunted for an app that would easily 'track' stuff. None, that I could find, offered a way to track with simple click with all 25-ish categories (aka kid names) showing a homescreen.
I was opening class dojo for something else when it hit me that it would make a great lap-tracking device! I deleted all positive and negative feedback buttons and added a custom "run one lap" button. Now, the Ipad sits on the picnic table and each kid (and me, too, actually!) tap the tracker each time we make a loop. Since the Dojo is time-stamped, you don't have to worry about Sneaky Cheaters. Yay! The extra cool feature is the automatic class lap tracking. It feels like the kids are really working as a team to get our class 'number' higher. Every time a student hits 100 laps, we give him/her a class 'ticket' and when the entire class reaches a 1,000 lap milestone, everyone in class earns a ticket. Pretty easy, really! And, much more enjoyable than paper logs! When I worked in math intervention, I always hated the awkwardness of oral administration. Some kids would NEVER ask for a question to be read aloud, while for others it was terribly distracting to have all that talking going while working in small group. It was actually more quiet in the large classroom! In a first attempt to fiddle with this, I uploaded a slideshow of 'buttons' using Weebly and linked them to audio files (via Dropbox & Voice Recorder Pro free app.) It was actually pretty snappy to make and the kids seemed to appreciate the ability to re-listen to questions and pace themselves. The only problem was a headphone shortage! : ) Otherwise, it went off without any technological glitches.
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April 2017
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