Educreations in Math!

I'm back and  meeting my goal of blogging at least once a week. Our district has fully implemented the Common Core standards in math. We are in the process of working on ELA. As a part of the district math development team, I have worked very hard to truly understand what the standards are asking of our students. Trust me, I think I will forever be trying to understand all of them.

I've started to focus my weekly newsletters to my staff on Math, specifically the 8 mathematical practices. This week I am focusing on mathematical practice #1: Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.  "When presented with a problem, I can make a plan, carry out my plan, and evaluate its sucess."

Because my school is a 1:1 device school. I really started thinking about how I could turn my normal "math journal" notebook digital! It just so happens that I was also thinking of a way to use Educreations in the classroom in the area of math. (FYI: Educreatiosn is a free app and web based tool).  I've been dying to get back to my old stomping grounds.....1st grade.

So I am working with a 1st grade teacher in my building to accomplish my "thought". We are presenting at our annual district technology conference in April and wanted to be able to share some student samples using Educreations.

What I did today was pull out a 1st graders and explain how to use Educreations. I then gave him a math problem verbally to solve using Educreations to see how he would do. He did great. Our students often have a hard time explaining why they solved a problem the way they did. So I did have to prompt him at times. I didn't pose a problem that was too difficult but often not asked of 1st graders. My goal was to get him used to Educreations and talking loud enough for the IPAD to catch his voice.

We are thinking of using it in small groups or during math centers. We are struggling with room noise being picked up in the student recordings.

Let me know if you have any suggestions! This is always an issue when numerous kids are trying to record anything in the classroom.

Check out our final product here:
 http://www.educreations.com/lesson/view/math-problem-with-a-1st-grader/5921893/?s=0n9eQx&ref=app