According to NETS for teachers, one role of the digital-age teacher is to engage students in solving problems using digital tools and resources (2008). I have found a few great websites that I would love to use in my classroom. The first website that I can see myself using is in the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives http://nlvm.usu.edu/en/nav/vlibrary.html. On this website, math resources and manipulatives are organized by math strand. One of the strands is measurement. When you open that tab, there are several activities based on attributes of shapes. My 1st grade students have been working on sorting shapes based on attributes, and several students are really struggling. This activity would be something I could put on the interactive whiteboard in my room, and allow students to come up and try to sort shapes based on attributes.
On the same website, there is a strand that refers to numbers and operations. Within that link, there is a place to see a large, interactive hundreds chart. Since I teach 1st grade, my hundreds chart lives on my math meeting board all year long. I am constantly referring to my paper hundreds chart, and talking about how to use it to help skip count. By using this online version instead, I would be able to set what I want to skip count by and where to start, and have students come up and click on which number they think comes next in the pattern. This I awesome!! (the link is below!)
Things related to technology automatically hook my students into my lesson much more quickly than anything I could say. By incorporating these free websites, my math lessons are sure to be much more engaging and fun. Added bonus: automatic feedback for students!
Hi Rachel,
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher of students with disabilities, I also see myself utilizing the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives during intense small group instruction. The activities are aligned to state standards and promote learning through enjoyable visual representations. Concrete models are in short supply at my school and I find this website as a huge asset in this effort. Number charts, fraction models, geometric shapes: all to my disposal. I could not agree with you more, simply awesome!
Rachel you have to check out Read, Write, Think:
http://www.readwritethink.org/
I use this website frequently to support decoding and comprehension instruction. Read, Write,Think is also aligned to state standards and provides experience & experiment with literacy activities such as reading,writing, and association of spoken words with their graphic represention(2011). The website provides lesson plans (for supplemental purposes), graphic organizers, writing starters, informational sheets, student interactive activities, and assessment tools (informal referencing). Read, Write, Think allows students to exchange information which is a requirement of NETS for students. In all honesty, I enjoyed using this website for spelling, punctuation, figurative language, and poetry! This website gets an A+!