Greetings from summer school land at Leonard Lawrence Elementary! Sarah A and I have been given the amazing task again this summer to help students out with their math skills. I wanted to write a post to share the wonderful ways we are using our iPads with this and also to remind ourselves what we did and what worked....so that next summer, shall we venture down this same path, we have something to look back on.
First, we looked through MAP data. Number sense and computation are our school's two big improvement goals. We decided to look at the enrolled students' scores for those two categories. Any student that was listed in the 49th percentile and below for their age/grade were put onto our list.
Half my day is spent pulling students out in small groups. I decided this year to pull out kids into groups by their MAP scores versus by classes. This makes it more student centered and the lessons are then level appropriate instead of having mixed groups of varying ranges. The other half of my day is spent going into the classrooms doing whole-group math lessons/activities.
Once small groups were formed, I had my principal print off the RIT bands/DesCartes for each of the groups I had. From those, I pull specific activities to work on with that group. I focus on the middle column [50% accuracy skills], and then move over to the right column. This way I can target exactly what each group needs to work on!
Sarah and I, as luck has it, are two of the lucky 1:1 iPad holders. We wanted to incorporate the iPads into our small group and whole group lessons as much as possible. It would be silly and almost stupid NOT to use them, right? So, each of my small groups spend the first 10 minutes of their 30 minutes with me on either Front Row or Khan Academy [depending on their age and whether they had an email address to access Khan or not]. These two programs have been AMAZING and it's awesome to see the weekly email reports come in with the details of all of their improvements!
After our 10 minute warm up, we move on to the skill[s] of the day that I pulled in advanced from the DesCartes. We go through the steps, discuss order of things, etc....we have used Screen Chomp a lot to practice problems with. We have also used Notability to use GRAPH paper to help kids line up numbers, etc. We then end our small group time for the day on either Zondle or play a game involving the skill we reviewed that day.
Zondle...what an amazing thing! You can access it either on the computer at www.zondle.com OR you can download the FREE app. See my previous post about all the things zondle can do. I find specific "quizzes" I want the kids to review [based on the skill for that day] and put it into MY FAVORITES. Because I have all of the students using the same username and password, when I put something into my favorites on one iPad, it is added into that category on ALL of the iPads. The kids CAN'T stop talking about playing Zondle. I have even done it whole group, having students work on a different grade level skill.
Other apps or programs I have used with the intermediate kids:
Quick Math, Math Splat, Super 7, Math Splash Bingo, Mathmateer, IXL Math, Pizza 1 [fractions app], Equalities, and Rounding.
Whole group lessons have ranged from working on the iPads with given apps/programs, playing place value bingo, decimals/percents bingo, rounding flash cards where students race to find their "match" without running or talking and I time them, and working on skills with the help of Brain Pop videos.
The students are EXCITED to come to small group and light up when I walk into their room for whole group lessons....ESPECIALLY if I have the iPads with me. It has completely changed the entire attitude of summer school. Kids WANT to go play zondle or jump on Front Row/Khan Academy from home. I am sending username and passwords home with the students to access over the summer and I am also letting parents know about different apps we use, costs for each, and what each app does. I could NOT imagine going back to summer school math remediation BEFORE the use of iPads. Thank you, Bellevue Public Schools, for helping me bring EXCITEMENT back to summer school math help! :)
