March 23, 2014 by plemmonsa

2014 Student Book Budgets: Real-World Math Lessons from Capstone Press

Each year, I dedicate a portion of library funding for students to control. Since the library is for all of our school community, I feel strongly that students should have a voice in what goes into the collection. Here’s what has happened so far:

Students developed a Google form survey and surveyed most of the school on their reading interests
Students analyzed the results and developed a list of goals to focus on which included sports, graphic novels, humor, scary, world records, and action/adventure.
Students met with Jim Boon from Capstone Press and Gret Hechenbleikner from Gumdrop books to look at book samples and catalogs.

Since the visit with the vendors, the student book budget group has been coming into the library on Mondays and Wednesdays during their recess to continue looking at catalogs. Much of what they wanted was in Capstone’s catalog, so their first step was to finalize what they wanted to order from Gumdrop. They decided on a Ripley’s Believe It or Not series, a how to draw graphic novel series, a graphic mythical heroes series, and a history’s most haunted series.

When that was done, I hooked up the scanner to my computer and gave all of the students a Capstone catalog. Capstone has a great feature where there is a barcode next to each set of books in the catalog. You can scan the set straight into your cart, or you can scan the set and select the books that you want. As students found books that matched our goals, they scanned the barcode and told me which books to add. At that point, we didn’t worry about cost. We wanted to add all of the books that we were interested in and then start narrowing. This adding process was so smooth thanks to this scanning feature. In the past, students have circled items in catalogs, written on pieces of paper, etc. and it took a lot of time to compile everything. I loved that we were all adding to the same list as we worked.

Right now, Capstone is offering an incentive like they often do. If you spend at least $1750, you get 30% back in Capstone Rewards. If you spend less that $1750, you only get 10%. This was a great math discussion. Our original budget was $1500 for all of the book budgets. However, if we spend just $250 more with Capstone, then we get $525 in free books. I’ve really pushed the group to think about budget, but this was a great real-world example where you sometimes have to spend beyond your budget if it helps you in the long run. The students unanimously agreed that we needed to spend the $1750 since we already had well beyond that amount in our wish list cart. I pulled out all of the numbers that I had to think about in order to make this happen. We looked at the remaining dollar amount in our district budget which was about $375. Then, we looked at the remaining balance in our local account, which holds profits from our book fairs along with any donations we receive. I told them about remaining expenses that I knew about for the year such as battle of the books. We agreed that there was enough money to purchase our list from Gum Drop and extend our Capstone Budget to $1750.

The final task, which we are still working on, is to narrow our cart. We started with a cart totaling almost $3000. We knew that we needed to reduce the cart to about $2200 in order to spend $1750 in cash and use $525 in rewards dollars. By the time we stopped talking about the math, students were all commenting on how hard this is. One of them said, “You mean this is just a small part of what you do?” I love that they keep bringing this up. I love buying new materials, but I’ve been very honest with them about what a small fraction of my time this actually is. As always, it was interesting to hear them wrestle with decisions about which books to cut from the list:

We have 3 books about drawing horses. Let’s pick the one with the most horses that people are probably interested in.
Three of our war books cost $27. Let’s pick something that doesn’t cost that much.
That book looks like it would only be for 5th graders. It might scare other kids. Let’s take it off the list.
We can’t buy every Jake Maddox book this time. Let’s choose a few of them.

Every struggle they were having is the same struggles that I go through alone. I loved being able to share this frustration with them, and they had a much better understanding of how I use math and decision making in my job. My only wish is that more students could walk through this process with me. Each year, I find new ways to involve different groups of students, but I would love to have larger groups of students involved in the math aspect.

Once we get our carts narrowed down, we will place our order and wait for the books to arrive. Since I have extra Capstone Rewards dollars, I’ll also be able to add in some historical perspective books that I’ve been wanting to get for our many social studies projects. While we wait, students will think about how to advertise the books to the school.

January 31, 2014 by plemmonsa

A Little Augmented Reality and Zombie Math with 1st Grade

A few weeks ago, Em Smith Headley, 1st grade teacher, asked if I could help with their math standards using the iPads. They have been working on using a variety of strategies to solve basic addition and subtraction problems.

$math standard$

http://georgiastandards.org

I pulled together just a few iPad apps for our time together that addressed basic addition and subtraction facts. I decided to use:

Fetch Lunch Rush: an augmented reality app that combines basic addition/subtraction, missing addends, racing, and augmented reality!
Math Zombies: a racing app that gives basic addition/subtraction problems along with double digit math to race against the ever-approaching zombies. Correct answers knock them out of the way.
Candy Count: a sorting app that allows kids to sort candy by color and then asks several math questions about the candy in each bag.
iXL: an app with multiple grade levels which gives standard problems and allows kids to type an answer.

I had student helpers make a 1st grade math folder on the iPads so that students could easily get to the apps. We looked at the standard and students brainstormed several strategies that they currently use for solving math problems. Things such as:

number lines
draw a picture
count up or count back
manipulatives
etc.

I reminded them that these same strategies come into play when we do math digitally and sometimes the app even provides some strategies for you with hints. I did not tell students how to play every app because they were perfectly capable of figuring that out on their own. I spent my time helping students think about strategy and encouraging students to help one another figure out the technical details of how the games worked. Of course, I helped students who had technical questions, too, but that wasn’t my main focus as the teacher.

Students were bursting with energy during this. Whether we worked for 25 minutes or 40 minutes, they were extremely focused. They were free to move in and out of the apps as needed. We were also able to differentiate for students who needed problems that were more challenging or problems with more basic features.

At the close, students gave some feedback on what they liked about each app. Math Zombies and Fetch Lunch Rush was by far the favorite, and they begged to get to do this again in their classroom or the library.

September 17, 2012 by plemmonsa

Fetch! Lunch Rush! App

Recently, on one of my favorite blogs, Free Technology for Teachers, Richard Byrne featured the app Fetch! Lunch Rush! for iPhone (also can be for iPad). I immediately downloaded it, played around with it, and loved it. I emailed all lower grade teachers to see if it might benefit their students with practicing some basic math facts, and the entire 1st grade team signed up to give it a try. I printed out the cards and posted them around the media center so that the game took on a true scavenger hunt feel. The basics of the game are that you have basic math facts that add or subtract up to 10. You have 10 printed cards with numbers and symbols on them to post around the room. The app gives you a fact, you find the answer, you point the iPad at the picture, a picture of sushi appears on your screen, and you tap it to send it to lunch. The app times how long it takes to answer the problems and increases in difficulty as accuracy and speed increase.

Students began on the carpet for a very brief demo of how the app worked. Some students were paired together on 1 iPad (up to 4 players can play on 1 device). Other students worked alone. It was amazing to watch how active the students were. They were scurrying about the media center looking for answers, pointing their iPads at the answer, tapping the augmented reality sushi, and moving on to the next problem. Along the way, students got problems that were challenging to them. The teacher and I gave them tangible objects to help them (fingers, popsicle sticks, markers, etc). They stopped on the floor or at tables to figure out the answer before moving to find the card on the wall. Students also began to get missing integer problems like 3 + ____ = 9. These were the most challenging for first graders, but the challenge didn’t stop them. They were eager to get an answer and continue the game.

This app pulled together so many great learning pieces for students. There was gaming, movement, problem solving, the cool factor, and technology. The teacher made observations and then went back to the classroom to practice more strategies that will help students develop their math fact fluency. I hope more apps like this one cross our path because it was fun, engaging, and took boring math fact practice to a whole new level!

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December 13, 2011 by plemmonsa

5th grade Student Math Tutorials

Three students filming their tutorials

Ms. Cross’ 5th grade ELT class has been doing some amazing work demonstrating various aspects of their math standards. Each student took a different standard and found ways of demonstrating that standard through drawings, manipulatives, and explanation. She was so impressed by their work that she thought it would be helpful for the students to create tutorials on their math components that could be used as mini-lessons or review sessions throughout the year in class. The tutorials could even be used by other classes.

In planning for this, we thought that students should have options for how they might document their process in solving various math problems. One option was using Glogster to create a review poster. Students would have written components, video or audio components, and possibly images of their work. Another option was to use the iPad to film a tutorial using all the pieces that had been created during the project.

Clare sets up her recording booth on a media center table

So far, one student has chosen Glogster & iPad and 5 students have chosen the iPad. These 6 students explored their options on these tools and did some initial experimenting to see how each tool worked best. Then, students spread out around the media center and used their tool to begin creating. I conferenced with each one to talk about what was working, what they had questions about, and what they might consider trying. On their own, students met with one another to show their work in progress and give one another feedback.

After getting all the pieces in place for creating their final product, the six students worked one final time in the media center to create their videos on the iPads. Their videos were uploaded to dropbox on the iPad, downloaded into My Videos under their accounts, and then put into their teacher’s network dropbox. I took the videos and also uploaded them to our media center YouTube page. Much of my time during these final steps was spent troubleshooting and also showing a few of the students how to do the many steps to get the videos to where they needed to be. After that, these students helped the other students. I love how quickly students figure things out and how willing they are to teach and support one another!

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December 2, 2011 by plemmonsa

Math Buddies Project

Today I had a wonderful time collaborating with Mrs. Mullins, Mrs. Maher, and their 5th grade/1st grade buddy partners. The first grade teachers has noted that the 1st graders are being challenged by math word problems, particularly those that they write themselves. Most of the students get the basic information of the problem down, but they forget to ask a question at the end and are often unsure of how to answer the problem. The 5th grade buddies have been supporting the 1st grade students in this challenge.

Today, all of the buddies came to the library. We began on the carpet where I read aloud the book Elevator Magic by Stuart J. Murphy. When each subtraction scenario appeared in the story, I paused and the 5th grade buddies worked with the 1st grade buddies to figure out the problem. We pinpointed the information that was provided, identified the question that was being asked, and vocalized our strategies for getting the answer.

Next, Mrs. Mullins demonstrated some math word problems on the smart board using the names of the first grade buddies. Once again 5th graders and 1st graders worked together to find a solution.

Finally, buddies went to tables to craft their own word problems using any numbers and objects they wanted. They were asked to jazz up their word problems as much as they wanted.

Mrs. Mullins, Mrs. Maher, and I all visited with buddies as they worked and listened to the many strategies that they were using. They crafted a whole variety of problems that ranged from single digit problems to problems dealing with thousands. Now, Mrs. Mullins plans to type up these problems and share them with the 1st grade teachers for use in class.

The buddies will return to the media center in January for another math experience with fractions.

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November 7, 2011 by plemmonsa

PreK and iPads: A Counting Story

Last week, I was sitting in a faculty meeting analyzing grade level math data with PreK. As I listened in, I heard them talk about students from the previous quarter who had not met the standard for counting to ten. They were making plans for new standards that were coming up in the current quarter, but also thinking about how to continue to support this group of students who needed to work on the previous quarter standards.

Counting Lite App

I pulled out my iPhone and searched the iTunes app store for counting apps, and found multiple free apps that we might try. Most of the free apps were limited versions of the larger paid versions, but for our purposes, the free versions were enough to try. I suggested that we might try some of these apps on our 10 iPads, and the teachers were eager to give it a go.

Today, the 2 teachers pulled together a group of students and brought them up. I gave very little whole group instruction on what to do other than introducing the iPad and how to touch the screen. I went around to each iPad and opened the app that students needed, and they started. As usual, I was amazed at how quickly students started interacting with the iPads. The teacher, a volunteer, and I went around to each student and prompted them to talk out loud because part of this lesson was to have the students practice counting. They touched objects on the screen, counted aloud, and the apps also counted aloud and wrote the number on each object as it was touched. I appreciated the ease of use of the iPads with PreK because the adults were able to focus on content instruction rather than having to instruct on how to use the technology. Students left feeling successful with using the technology and with counting, and the teacher left feeling like students had practiced multiple standards through a few apps and was eager to come back to use the iPads some more.

I started this year with a flexible plan for the iPads that the district is having me pilot. I’ve listened to teacher and student needs and searched for how the iPad might be a tool to support those needs. The excitement over the device is growing, and I have a feeling that our small cart of 10 iPad is going to be in high demand very soon.

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