Monday, December 10, 2018

A Day in Fourth Grade Math: Enhancing Learning With iPads & More


Last week I was at Minnewashta Elementary School when fourth grade students were in math classes. When I walked into Jeff Beckstrom’s classroom I could see students were learning about triangles with a student teacher. I heard terms like scalene, obtuse, equilateral, right, length, and more. I remembered teaching about this myself 23 years ago when I taught fourth grade math starting my teaching career in Minnetonka. Although the content and objectives were the same, so much about the instruction had changed. I taught with an overhead projector, transparencies and markers and students had a textbook, paper and a pencil. Now in 2018, paper and pencils were still present and being used, but each student had an iPad and the teacher had a SMARTBoard connected to a computer.

One of the most noticeable differences for me was how many more tools were instantly accessible at the learner’s fingertips. This school year we increased the number of iPads in our fourth grade classroom sets providing enough so that every student has a device. Students in K-3 classrooms have a class set of six iPads and students in grades 5-12 have an iPad that they carry to and from school each day. With the increase of devices in fourth grade this year, every student can use technology for learning at any point throughout the day, and they can save and store their work without having to log in to a shared device. This really increases the amount of time for enhanced and individualized learning.

 
The day before I visited the classroom students had cut out a variety of triangles on paper and sorted and named these. Then they had each taken photos of their work and even labeled the images as pictured. Students were referring back to these photos during the lesson while I was present, something that wasn’t possible back when I was an elementary math teacher. Students were also using Notability to complete some problems on a worksheet (as you can see pictured as well). Since they don’t bring their iPad home, they had notes and definitions writing on paper (also pictured). se

Every few minutes in the lesson, the teacher would guide the students into a different activity, really doing a nice job of maintaining their attention and keeping them engaged and motivated. Students used some apps to practice measuring angles, such as Pattern Shapes (pictured). They also worked through problems on IXL (pictured). And throughout the lesson, students used the teacher’s Schoology site as the go to place to access these different materials (pictured). Each of these activities complimented one another nicely to really enhance the instruction and students’ learning. I sure wish I had all this access to technology a couple decades ago when I was trying to teach my students these same skills--it’s obvious how much more students can learn and how much more they are able to understand with all these technological resources at their fingertips!

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