Monday, May 10th, 2021:
During our math block this morning, as I was circulating my students, while they were completing their work. One of my girls raised her hand to ask for assistance on our math program, Imagine Math. This math program is designed for the iPads and allows students a completely individualized program that allows students to progress at their own pace, through the lessons.
The student that I was working with was working on adding a single-digit number and a teen number, without regrouping. What caught my eye was how this program was helping students better understand how to complete problems like these:
- Students are able to listen to guided directions about how to complete the problem, along with a magnified pointer for students to easily follow along on their iPads.
- To help students focus on the specific part of an addition problem, specific parts on the problem may shake, glow, or expand to help students follow along to the step-by-step lessons.
- Another important part of this program that I noticed today was how the color coordinated the different place value locations.
- Finally, the students are asked to solve the problem by dragging and dropping numbers into the correct locations on the screen, to successfully complete the problems.
- After a student correctly adds in the "ones place value," they move on to another screen where they add the "tens place value," and then finally they have the students add both the "ones place value," and the "tens place value," in order to complete the entire addition problem.
Ultimately, while I was working with this individual student, I began to reflect about how I could use this program's teaching strategies into my own instruction.
I have two ideas to use in my own instruction:
- Color coordinating the different place values for students to follow along better with (Ones - Yellow/Tens - Blue/Hundreds - Red).
- Have students only focus on one place value, then the next, and then finally solving the whole problem.
As teachers, we are lifelong learners! This is a perfect example of that!
ReplyDeleteImagine Math sounds like a great way to to monitor individual student's ability to solve specific math concepts. As a special education math teacher, I love to hear other teacher's strategies to support student's needs!
ReplyDeleteImagine Math sounds like a great way to to monitor individual student's ability to solve specific math concepts. As a special education math teacher, I love to hear other teacher's strategies to support student's needs!
ReplyDeleteReally neat program. The video example really brought to life what the program is.
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