Technology Update

    In January I mentioned that we won a grant through the district and received 15 iPads for our classroom. (I'm sure you've heard about this from your child.)  I wanted to give you an update on what we have been doing with our technology and how you can check in on your child's progress as well. 

    For our grant I had specific goals that I wanted to address with the use of the iPads and technology in the classroom. One of the goals was to address the reading Common Core State Standards. To address these standards we have been using newela.com to read current events articles, write about controversial issues, post our writing, and have online discussion via Edmodo. We have also been doing the same thing with our Junior Great Books stories. I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing how the kids have been interacting with each other, and enjoy hearing the ideas of quieter students as well. 

   Here are a few excellent examples showing how our class had an "online discussion" through Edmodo. 

       

       

       

        

    If you haven't looked at Edmodo with your child yet, please do. You can either use their login or use the parent code from their account to link up to it. I keep all my grades in the online grade book for their daily assignments, so no need to get "missing work reports" anymore, you can look it up anytime you want. 

    Another goal is to use our technology in math. We have only started to attempt this, but what we have done has been very successful. The students are highly engaged and have used the technology to explain their mathematical thinking through pictures, numbers, and words. We have used the CPM online textbook, so if your child wants to use these tools at home while doing their homework, they can! I highly encourage this in fact!

  

        

   In this example students showed how Tate and Erick were both correct when Tate called this decimal two tenths and three hundredths, and Erick called it twenty-three hundredths. Students could visually show this, as well as add text to further explain their math thinking.

      

    Recently we have been working on finding ways to change triangles, trapezoids, and parallelograms into rectangles and squares, in order to more easily use the methods we already know to find the area. With this fun activity the kids were able to manipulate the shapes in order to rearrange them. They loved this and got the hang of rearranging shapes to find area quickly! 

   We have been using the iPads a lot- but I won't overwhelm you now. A good dinner conversation starter would be to ask your child how they used the iPad. Feel free to leave feedback in the comments below or e-mail me if you have any personal questions about what we are doing.