Last Friday #TechTakeout had the pleasure of going out to one of our elementary schools for the day. We worked with three 4th grade classes on computation of fractions. Tech Takeout started off playing a Kahoot game to get everyone warmed up. It was 5 easy fraction questions, just enough to get everyone excited. Here’s the link to the Kahoot if you want to use it in your classroom. Did you know that you can now add MOVIE clips to Kahoot? Wooo hooo!
While the students were working we had the 3D printer going! The students loved watching the printer work. Since our focus was fractions for the lesson, we printed two fraction pies for each class. We downloaded the templates here, changed the colors of the pies, and then printed while in the class. Our Elementary Instructional Technology department wrote a grant last year to the Henrico Educational Foundation for the 3D printer. We have been using it in classrooms across the county in multiple curriculum areas with huge success.
The students then split into four groups and each did a different activity involving fractions...
fraction talk from Sarah Green on Vimeo.
Mr. Covais and Ms. Browne had students copy a Google Slides template to add fractions with unlike denominators. They worked in partners to find a common denominator and dragged stars to represent their problems. After that, they saved their pictures to their desktop and uploaded it to the website, Educreations. They recorded their voices explaining how they solved their problems.
Mr. Caratachea and Mrs. Robinson’s group worked on simplifying fractions. The students all signed in as a guest to BoardThing. This resource is somewhat similar to Padlet but has some different features. Check out {THIS} post I wrote about BoardThing. Prior to starting the lesson Mrs. Robinson and Mr. C uploaded 5 images and placed them across the top. When the students joined the board they each picked a different colored post-it note to use for their fractions. Then they typed their names on the post it and placed it under the flag they were racing to. Using these fraction task cards , students drew cards and had to reduce the fraction to the simplest form. Once reduced, they created a post-it note on the digital board. Then they placed their post-it in their column and worked their way to the finish flag. If fractions were incorrectly then Mr. C or Mrs. Robinson deleted that post-it. Everyone had an awesome time racing to the top! Check out one of their BoardThing walls!
Mrs. Hues and Ms. Wright did Nearpod on fractions.
Students had to fill in the blank, find common denominators, watch a video, and take a short quiz. Students watched a short quiz in Educreations on how to find the common denominator without multiplying the two fractions together. Then they practiced what they learned on Nearpod. At the very end students had a mini quiz for review.
We had a blast showing the 4th grade teachers and students all of these different techie tools. I can’t wait to bring #TechTakeout to the next school!
