I just spent a while reading back on our iPaddling journey thus far… Though the process still feels somewhat new to me, I can now see how much progress we’ve made! Craziness!
If you haven’t seen the posts documenting our progress – check them out!
1. iPaddling in the BYOD Classroom
3. The iPad Effect: A Top-10 List
I thought it was time for an update. The iPads have begun to become invisible in the classroom on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Students are acting responsibly (no licenses have been revoked), and strengthening their skills as independent workers, effective presenters, and direction followers. Learning is becoming more and more individualized as I am able to assign different levels and activities to each student. Exciting stuff!!
These past two weeks, we have been working hard to learn Bar Modeling in math. We are piloting Math in Focus, so the entire program is new to all of us, and very challenging at times. Each bar model has many features, and it takes several steps to solve each problem. Done well, a bar model can help us understand and organize our thinking in order to problem solve. Not an easy task for those of us new to the process!
Created using Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Singapore Math Bar Models
For the past two days, we worked very hard at solidifying our skills so we could make some tutorials for other students to watch. Students do not yet have the bar model app on their iPads, so we had to improvise. We have been using EDUCreations for SO many of our lessons, so it only seemed natural to use it again. The ability to edit a presentation still isn’t available, so some of the minor mistakes made will have to stay for now. What I am able to do instead, is sit down with a student and listen to their recording together. We then talk about what they did well, and the opportunities they can take advantage of the next time around.
My students hope their explanations will allow other students to better understand the process of how to use a bar model. Here are a few to check out!
Are you using a bar modeling system to solve problems in your classroom? Do you have strategies to share? Leave a comment, we’d love to read them!
Stay tuned,
