Third Grade iPads

Luckily, this past week I have been able to start with my long term position in third grade. I have been in the classroom before, so fortunately I am used to the classroom routine and what they are learning. I have noticed that iPads are not regularly used in the classroom. I hoped that using the iPad that I have, would be helpful for the students and change up what the students are doing each day. This week, the students had been working on multiplication and division problems. They complete word problems and have to use strategies to solve the problem and determine if the word problem is a division or multiplication problem. In order to help the students learn their multiplication and division facts, they need to continue to practice them.

I decided to use the iPad game Mathopolis with my students. Mathopolis is a firefighter themed game that students really enjoy. There are many different levels of the game that start with basic addition and go all the way up to division. In the game, a building is on fire and in order to put the fire out you have to solve the math problems. Within the different levels, students can choose between easy, medium, and hard. The game can also be timed or not timed. The game is $0.99, but is completely worth paying for because of all the game comes with.

I split the students into small groups. One group was working with the student teacher to work through word problems together, one group was working independently to solve problems, and the other group was working with me on the iPad. We switched stations every 15 minutes so all the students would have time to get to each station. I explained the game to the students. Each student would have their own turn doing the game themselves. This would help with their math fluency and building up their math facts. We started with multiplication. I had each student do a level of multiplication, since I knew this group would handle it well. Once each student completed the multiplication levels, we moved onto the

division problems. Depending on which group I was working with, I either started with multiplication or addition. One of the groups I worked with only did the addition and subtraction problems since we still needed to work on getting those facts down.

I loved using the Mathopolis game! The students absolutely loved the firefighter theme. It is a better way to learn your math facts then just using flash cards that students become bored with. Making sure that students have their math facts down helps them complete the word problems easier. It also builds up the students fluency with the math facts. The students did a great job with this activity! Having them do it one at a time with the game, allows me to see exactly how each student is doing and what I need to help them with. This is a game I will definitely be using again.

Kindergarten iPads

This week I had been subbing in a kindergarten classroom. This was the first time I had ever done anything in a kindergarten classroom so I was very excited. Luckily, the teacher I was subbing for had a student teacher. The student teacher was the one that was fully teaching the class, so I mainly followed her instruction for what she wanted me to do with the students. The majority of the classroom time was spent in small groups, which was very nice. I spent most of the time with the students during math. This is when we spent the most time focusing on each student and how they were doing in math.

This week, the kindergarten class was learning all about different kinds of shapes; mainly 3-D. The students had been making little shape books with pictures and the names and they had also been working on matching shapes with the proper name. I was in charge of a small group where we would be using the iPads. The student teacher told me which app to have the students use. She told me to use Shapes Memory Match.

The Shapes Memory Match app had everything! you could choose from three different categories of games. You could choose from shape-shape, pictures & shapes, or just pictures. These different categories represented the different levels. When you picked which category you wanted to use, you could choose from a memory game, in which you had to flip over the cards and match them based off your memory. Or, you could choose the, show me, game where all the cards were shown to you and you had to match the cards based off what was on them.

I worked with two different small groups during their math time. I first worked with a lower group. I
brought out the iPad and decided to start off with the shape-shape game. We also did the show me category where the students just had to match the given shapes that were shown. For example, there would be six cards with different shapes on them shown. Each student would have a turn matching the same shapes together. They might be triangles, squares, rectangles, hexagons, etc. We passed the iPad around so each student would have a turn. The students flew through this level quite easily. I decided to try the memory game with them. They had to flip over the given cards and match what each shape was. We spent the majority of our time doing this. They loved it! Since they played this for a while, each student had a turn for their own game.

The second group I worked with was a higher math group. I decided to start with the pictures & shapes category first. This is where the card would show a piece of cake, and the student would have to match it with the card that showed a triangle. We did the show me game first. The students were able to see all the cards and they matched each one according to the picture and shape. We passed the iPad around so each student would have a turn. After a few minutes of this they wanted to try the memory game. We still continued with the pictures & shapes. The students struggled a bit more with remembering where the shapes were, however they did very well with this and loved the game. Each
student had their own turn playing a game.

Shapes Memory Match was such a great app for these kindergarteners. I could tell they loved the game and just wanted to keep playing it. This game allowed the students to not only recognize shapes and their names, but also recognize real objects that are in a particular shape. This gave them real-world examples of shapes that we see every day. I also loved that it helped the students build their memory as well. I would absolutely play this game with the students again!

Second Week of iPads

This past week I was substituting in a second grade classroom for a week and a half. The teacher had laid out all of the plans extremely well including guided reading. She did not want me doing anything too much with the students so that she would not fall behind. I was mainly working with students in order to improve their fluency, sight words, and vocabulary. I met with two different groups each day and followed very similar plans with each group.

I was mainly in charge of focusing with the lower reading groups in the class. I had another teacher in the classroom with me that was in charge of the higher reading groups. The teacher informed me that  she wanted me to mainly focus on building the students fluency while reading. The teacher had given me a list of iPad apps that she likes to use to help the students with fluency. The one I chose to use with my different groups was Read Me Stories.

In this app, the students were able to pick a story from the list the app gave us. The app had a great deal of different kinds of stories for the students. The students could choose if they wanted to have the story read to them and follow along with the highlighted words, or if they wanted to read the story themselves with the highlighted words. Either way, the students would be able to hear the words out loud and begin to recognize them. If the students choose to read the story on their own and they get stuck on a word, they can press the volume button and it will read that part of the story to you.

I had the students pick a story they wanted to read. I first had them read the story on their own. I had them look at the pictures and look at the highlighted words. If they ever got stuck, I asked them what would make the most sense and had them look at the pictures to aid them. After they read the story once on their own, I let them have the story be read out loud to them. This would allow the students to hear the actual story and hear the words they might have been struggling with.

The students seemed to enjoy working with this app. I believe it helped the students with word recognition and picking up their fluency when they are reading. However, I think there are better apps out there for the students to help with their fluency. The app had limited free stories that the students could choose from. If you wanted a series, you would have to pay for it. Also, I found the app a bit annoying because you had to keep pressing different buttons if you wanted it to read it out loud. Lastly, I wish that if a student was stuck on a particular word, I wish the app would let you hit that specific word instead of reading the entire page over again. However, the students seem to enjoy it and they liked being able to read the stories on their own and also have it read to them.