For the first week of April my elementary math number line game is free. You can find it here. It's a card game that requires some printing and cutting to make the components. If you have any feedback on the game, please let me know!
I included this information about the value of such games at the end of the rule document:
I knew from teaching math that number lines were important for visualization. I created a number line game years ago, but when I tested it with some first graders, I soon found my initial ideas had some issues. I put the game on the shelf. Then recently I heard Jo Boaler make a statement like this one,
Researchers even found that after four 15-minute sessions of playing a game with a number line, differences in knowledge between students from low-income backgrounds and those from middle-income backgrounds were eliminated (Siegler & Ramani, 2008). (Quoted from here)
I don’t know that Jo Boaler would endorse this game, but after hearing her, I knew I had to return to it! I fixed the gameplay problems and tested it with groups of students from ages 7 to 11. They were immediately hooked! I have been so impressed with how even the youngest students had no problems playing, even when some versions had a number line with negative numbers!
I worked with LeeAnn Raible recently as part of our Go Beyond Challenge. She had the idea of letting students make word problems using addition and subtraction, then they'd record their solutions with Seesaw.
I'll embed some of their examples at the end of the poast.
She called the project Number Story Ninjas, and we also connected with another elementary school in our state to get feedback. Giving the students an authentic audience was a fun addition.
Here's the process we went through.
Step 1: LeeAnn assigned each student a role of Writer, Editor, Graphic Designer and Problem Solver.
Step 2: Six Writers each created a simple word problem like the one in the picture. These were written on paper, so no tech was needed.
Step 3: I met with the class to introduce them to Google Classroom and Google Slides. After that, the Editors typed the Writers' problems into a basic Google Slides template.
Step 4: I copied their text to a larger Google Slides template that would work with Seesaw. Here's an example of a blank slide. It's 2000 pixels wide, so you really need to make large fonts for them to show up.
I also added some clip art from Pixabay. Do not let students search that site for pictures, due to some content. It does have plenty of transparent images that work great for this project. I pasted possible images in a second slide, then I added the text, our logo, and the "blackboard" image to the first slide.
Step 5: I met with groups of two to four Graphic Designers to help them design the slides using the clip art I provided. No one felt limited by the options I chose, so that was a bonus! Their main task was choosing a title font, background color, then pasting images from the second slide to their template. They got lots of practice using ctrl-c and ctrl-v to copy and paste.
Step 6: After I saw how they wanted the slides to look, I recreated them in Seesaw. This step was a little more time consuming than I expected, but it wasn't bad once I got the hang of it. In Google Slides, I copied the students' slides, then deleted anything that needed to be moveable. I downloaded the remaining items as a JPEG, then uploaded that to Seesaw for the background.
I made this video for teachers, showing how I created the activities in Seesaw. Note that I cropped a lot of images from Pixabay when I put them in Google Slides. Seesaw didn't give me that feature (that I could find). So I ended up editing some Pixabay images in another program, before uploading them to Seesaw as the video shows.
Here are some examples the Seesaw activities we used:
Step 7: We assigned those activities in Seesaw. LeeAnn's students were already very familiar with recording using Seesaw on iPads, so the tech part of this was easy. I met with groups in a quiet part of the school to help with recording.
It took some coaching to get them to go through the problems in a way that would make sense to a viewer. You'll see the directions also asked them to show it with an equation and with the pictures.
I did take about 90 minutes to edit all six videos. There were minor distractions, some mistakes and some prompts from me or other students as they worked.
I remembered at this stage of the project that Liz Kolb (in her Triple E Framework) suggests co-use of devices as a research based practice, to improve engagement with the content. So I had two students work together on some problems and I could see the benefits right away.
Here are a couple examples of the finished product. I think they turned out great! When we use the project again, we agreed we will use more complex math problems.
Two students working together on one iPad, performing an addition problem:
It's been a long time since I've posted any games on this blog. I'm glad to get back to its early origins (not to mention its name). Here are two simple games I've been playing with elementary students.
Both of these games have some graphics to print and they need a few other items to play. The rule documents explain everything you need to know, but I'll offer some summaries below.
I use games like these in math to let students get comfortable with numbers, not to necessarily teach a concept. For example, I've seen younger students play and have fun with games using negative numbers long before they studied integers. I wouldn't give them an integer quiz after playing or even claim that they knew how to do basic operations. I'm happy to see them getting a general feel for how numbers work.
Watch Your Step
This game (pictured above) lets students move on a short number line with the roll of a die. Variations are described so that it can be enjoyed by students from at least 2nd - 5th grade. It works best with three players in each group. Each group needs a die, some pawns and the game board (which can be printed on a sheet of paper). They also need paper to keep score.
Here are the rules and the printable boards. I use this Jamboard to teach the game to the class. It has a scoring summary on the second slide. Be sure to change it so it matches the variation you are using. When teaching the game, I emphasize these two rules:
Players can keep rolling on their turn. (Students think they roll once and pass the die.)
Don't score the round until each player has taken a turn. (They like to write down points as soon as they move.)
Smash the Bugs (or Flip the Cards)
This game uses counting or addition at most, so younger players can enjoy it. It is based on the classic game of Shut the Box. Using cards allows students to count objects if they aren't very fast with their addition. It's also cheaper to make several sets, and it's easier to store.
Players play in pairs. You need to print and cut out a copy of the 10 cards for each pair of students. One set is provided with pictures of bugs on them. You can print blank cards too, and have the students decorate them with objects that they choose. You also need two dice for each pair of students and paper and pencil, if they keep score.
This year I'll be working with Brenda June's 6th grade math classes to create video lessons. It's a plan I submitted in May as a proposal for a MACUL grant. I was excited to learn they accepted our proposal. Brenda and I started working with the classes last week.
I will be reporting regularly on the progress, so I won't go into great detail here. The basic idea of the grant is we will post several video lessons that have been created by me, Mrs. June and the students. In building our video portal site, we will also be developing a classroom brand.
The photo above shows the equipment we were able to purchase with the grant. We have two iPads along with tripods and mounts. We also got an iRig Studio microphone and a Dell Chromebook.
We will be using the Explain Everything app to record the tutorials and then edit in some standard bumpers to the beginning and the end uisng iMovie. We hope to incorporate live video in time too. Besides math videos, we will make some that feature growth mindset and study skill tips.
Last week we took two class periods to work on a very basic video lesson. We use the ShowMe app on the middle school's set of iPads. Normally we won't work with the whole class at one time as we create the videos, but we wanted everyone to see the process form start to finish. As we suspected, a lot of the lessons were rough, but I was very impressed with the students' excitement as they worked!
Next up, we will decide on a name for our video lessons and we will begin building the site for the portal. Brenda and I will get things rolling with a few lessons. We will start working with the first group of students soon.
Here's the playlist of all of our Smart Jams math songs. If you download or share them, please include a link to this page or my Music Creation in the Classroom page.
When the songwriting and recording for the Smart Jams math music video project was all wrapped up I ended up with audio files, pictures and video for 23 projects. That means I spent a lot of time editing over Christmas break!
As of today (1-5-2014) I have completed 14 videos and eight more of the songs are mixed down. Over the next few days I'll finish the rest. I haven't had much time for blogging through all this, but here are a few things I learned:
I wish we would have piloted this with only one or two classes! I really enjoy the entire process, but managing all the files is quite a task.
I am editing the videos this time around because I need to see the whole process and the project took enough class time already. The overall goal was to identify a simple process and have the students compile the audio, pictures and video themselves in the future. I learned a lot about this and I'll post the information in the weeks ahead.
I originally planned on having each video play through the song three times. Previous materials I posted referred to that. Now that I look at what I have recorded and how much editing is before me, though, I see it's far more realistic to just repeat the song twice.
I need more structure to the picture and video recording portion. Some of the factors (creativity, attendance, timing, availability of devices...) caught me off guard and what I have to work with is making editing take longer. I'm sure that by the time I finish all of these I'll have a much better list of guidelines for that phase of the process.
For now, here's a compilation of a few videos I have completed. I blurred the faces because we haven't had a chance to get signed release forms from parents. Also, I wanted to see how that feature works on YouTube.
This was probably my last week in the classroom for the Smart Jams project. (Check my Music in the Classroom page for the full outline of this math and music video project for elementary grades.)
While it has been five weeks, I really only met with most classes about nine times for 45 minutes each. That comes out to around six to seven hours of class time. It's more than I wanted, but I have learned some ways to save time. I will write all of that up in a later post.
This week most groups were finishing their signs for their video. Meanwhile, I met outside the room with groups to record the parts for their video.
A lot of students had big ideas of how their video would look, but I told them we had to be realistic! The project involves 23 videos altogether and we simply didn't have time for lots of effects and different settings. To keep it manageable, I told them we had about 20 minutes per group for recording. Most times we were done in 15.
Almost all the students had a lot of fun performing for their video. It was good to be a part of a project with so many smiles and much laughter.
Here's the general process I used for most groups as I recorded the content:
Make and record a problem in Explain Everything that will be displayed on screen during the first time through their song. Ideally they created this problem on their video planning sheets. Some wanted to work the problem on paper instead.
Get pictures of each of their signs.
Take video of dancing, displaying the signs or, in some cases, lip synced performances of the song. We used the Video Star app for this. (Small note: Video Star was updated this week with a feature for using multiple devices to record a performance. I haven't had a chance to try this yet, but I hope to next week. If it works as described this could be an excellent feature for multi-camera productions.)
I finished with about half the groups this week, so next week I will pull the others from their regular music class activity to finish up.
Here are other notes about this week:
When students finished recording I told them I needed some logos and designs for mySmart Jams portion of the website and for my MACUL presentation. They created these with the same low tech approach as their signs.
I gave half the students a post-test. Those students were given a pretest before we started, so I am curious to see how much they learned about the math in this project. I still have to check those.
Speaking of work, I am still touching up recordings, working in UJam and processing pictures. The vocal performances varied quite a bit in quality. I had to line up audio on the beats in almost every case. Sometimes it took only a few minutes. In other cases, the students' rhythm was way off and it took me way too long to get something that's barely satisfactory. I am going to speak with Crystal about the best way to address this in the future. One thought is that with a group that struggles (often because of absences), she would perform the main parts and we would have the others just do backup vocals here and there. I will write a full report on recording and processing files along with demo videos and more notes on what I learned.
Video editing is going to be my big job over Christmas break. While I am going to polish up a couple outstanding examples, most videos will be very simple. I am going to limit editing to 15 - 30 minutes and work exclusively on the iPad for those.
Just before Thanksgiving break I recorded a few of the math songs the students wrote. Two samples are posted below, but first here is important information to consider if you do this project.
As I mentioned in another post, the songwriting was probably the hardest part of this for students. The second hardest part is getting them to sing or rap on the beat. In most cases we get close in the recording then I adjust some phrases in editing.
Here are a few other things to note:
Students are not making full songs. We are doing short choruses. See my music page for full information on the project.
I'm still working on the background tracks and we haven't started recording any video yet. These are just quick audio files from GarageBand on the iPad to offer as a preview.
In the final version the chorus will play at least three times. A sample problem will be worked out on screen while the chorus plays to help the steps make sense.
This was a short week, since we are off for a few days for Thanksgiving. We met with all four classes once. Most groups finished writing their songs and began practicing with basic beats.
As I started last week, I showed more students how to make a beat with Smart Drums on the iPad. Crystal worked with most groups to help them rap or sing the lyrics to the beat. We both knew it would be hard for many of them to feel the rhythm, but in a few cases it has been more of a challenge than I expected! I'm getting better at directing them during recording.
I recorded three groups this week and I'm working on putting their vocal tracks to a full music track over the next few days.
I also gave a few groups this Music Video Planning Sheet. It aids in planning the visuals that will be displayed over three repetitions of their chorus. Even though no one is really ready to start recording video, by having this sheet ready we were able to keep all groups working even though not everyone could be practicing with Crystal or recording with me.
Hopefully I'll have some sample audio recordings to show off soon!
Here is the current version of The Perimeter and Area Song that Crystal Owen and I created as a sample. We will show this to students next week, then begin working on their original songs and videos.
When I was a high school math teacher I would often do games and activities on the days before breaks. One of the more popular ones that I created was a "math book maze" that would take the students through several pages of the textbook and ask them to follow steps that usually involved math operations.
For example, it would say, "Take the last number you see on page 257 and divide it by 6. Go to that page and do problem 16."
If I made the challenges just right students had a lot of fun racing through the steps hoping to get the correct number at the very end before anyone else.
Recently a high school math teacher asked about some technology activities for a similar "fun day" he was having in his basic algebra class. I updated my idea of the math book maze and called it a Wikipedia Math Maze.
The idea is the same. Students do some basic math problems and follow directions while they search through Wikipedia. It went over very well with the students I tested it with. Here it is as a Google Document:
I quickly realized that Wikipedia is updated frequently and it can throw off my maze! The day before the activity I found I had to change some of the numbers because new footnotes had been added to one of the entries. If you base it on a well known topic it would be possible the details could change even during the day you hand it out. This is not an assignment to copy at the start of the year!
An obvious extension of this assignment (possibly for an advanced class) would be to have the students make their own maze. While just solving one of the mazes requires accuracy and careful reading, making one is even more challenging because one has to be sure the directions are not ambiguous.
I'm working with a group of middle school students and I told them the final project for the class will be an educational music video. They were not so sure they liked the idea of singing or being in a video. In an effort to encourage them, I took the plunge and finished an idea I had been working on. So here goes.
It's not easy for me to play something like this for the students, but I wanted to take the step and encourage them to do something better.
I'm not sure if it looks like it, but the video itself took a long time to create. We won't have time for something that complex in class, but I think they can do better at making a complete song as opposed to a short chorus like I wrote.
For anyone interested in the process, here's a rough outline of what I did and the software I used.
I knew I wanted to make a song about the quadratic formula. I obviously didn't write any lyrics. The formula was the chorus.
I used VoiceBand on my iPad to improvise a melody over a click track. If it's not apparent, I don't sing that well and the pitch correction in VoiceBand helps me end up with something workable.
From there, I put it in UJam. I was going to create the whole song in UJam and I might still do that. When I saw some of the simple chords that came out of one version, though, I realized I could play that on guitar. I changed what UJam gave me for chords. I also played around with the melody and rhythm quite a bit after that initial idea.
I programmed the bass, drums and a simple guitar part in the GarageBand app on my iPad. I recorded my actual guitar using the iRig guitar adapter. I recorded the vocals (including the spoken part) with the iRig Mic Cast.
To polish the vocals a little more I used GSnap in Audacity for pitch correction.
The song was not done at this point, but I had an idea of how I wanted it to flow. I started gathering video. Almost all of the video was created or captured with my iPad. For the stop motion segment in the middle I used Stop Animator. For the other animated sequences I used DoodleCast Pro. There's also a short segment of a screen capture where I grabbed the Daum Equation Editor using Screencast-o-matic.com.
I couldn't get a good mix of the audio on the iPad, so I exported each track and converted them to .wav format using Zamzar.com. I brought them into my very old version of Music Creator. I'm sure an updated version would do a lot more, but I just use my old version because it lets me split, copy and paste right on the beats of the song. I could do this on the iPad or the MacBook with GarageBand, but I'm used to years of playing around with Music Creator.
I'm not a sound engineer by any stretch, but after getting a mix I could live with, it was time to tackle the video editing.
I used iMovie on my daughters MacBook to add a few effects to the clips of me playing the guitar. Other than those, all the video was done in Corel VideoStudio. As I wrote previously, I was unhappy with Corel's customer service awhile back, but I do still love that video editing software. I am always amazed at the level of control and effects that I can achieve for relatively little cost and effort.
When it's all said and done, it took way longer than I hoped (easily over 20 hours, but I lost count) and it's far from perfect. I am happy with it as a first effort and I look forward to seeing how it encourages my students.
I am doing a problem solving activity in a middle school classroom and I came across this video that I made in 2007. I had completely forgotten about it!
In this case, I had two ambitious students who did all the recording for me. I compiled the clips and then wrote a script. They did the narration and I put it together.
I think this would make an excellent classroom project, but the editing was more time consuming than most teachers will be able to accommodate. One solution would be to divide the work between a math class and a video production or ELA class.
My only other advice is to plan ahead of time how much you'll include (how many people, how much of their solutions or attempts). Otherwise editing can take a long time as you figure out the direction based on all the video you've recorded.
I used to use this in class by stopping as soon as the problem is displayed. After students had time to think about a solution I would play the rest. A lot of the fun comes from the fact that they knew the students and teachers, but some have told me this will still be useful in their classes.
I am trying something new with this fun math class presentation game for ActivInspire. I made the game using Stencyl and embedded the Flash file in the flipchart. The flash version is below too.
It was created with interactive whiteboards in mind, but two people can compete at one computer if they pass the mouse back and forth. You can find it on the Stencyl Arcade here.
If you're just interested in seeing the Flash file, it's here: Factor Duel
It is based on the game Juniper Green. I actually never played that one with my students, but I was introduced to it early in my career by another teacher who claimed it was very popular in his classes. I always wanted to create a more lively computer version that checked the students' moves. I think this one accomplishes that well, but I noticed it can be sluggish on older systems.
In the way of credits, I created all the graphics, music and the game logic. Some sounds were built from files I found at FreeSound.org.
When I was in the math classroom I was continually aware that students' problem solving skills were hindered by their inability to visualize concepts. Proportions and multiple representations of values were simply steps the students tried to remember for a quiz rather than a concept that would come in handy (and often was absolutely necessary) for solving a variety of real world problems.
Approaching problem solving with steps instead of a conceptual understanding is like trying to get from my home in Michigan to my in-laws' house in Florida by memorizing every turn. Even if I can remember the list, let's hope there's no unexpected construction along the way. A conceptual understanding would be like having a map. It's the big picture and it comes in handy even when the unexpected comes along.
When our district purchased Promethean Boards and I started experimenting with ActivInspire I realized I finally had a tool that would let me show students some of the ways I visualized concepts. One such tool I created is a fraction estimator.
With all the multiplying and dividing going on in a typical conversion problem, most students never stop to consider we are always talking about the same value. One-fourth is exactly the same amount as 0.25 or 25%. This fraction estimator provides a good visual for explaining this. When I used it with students they picked up on the concept quickly. While it does not provide exact answers in conversions, it gives students the conceptual tool that will help them make connections when solving problems that require such understanding.
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