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Instructional Materials & How-Tos

If you haven't checked out the Free Math Apps from the Math Learning Center, I encourage you to visit the website and watch the short demo videos. These apps have made a huge difference when trying to model with mathematical tools during virtual teaching especially. I like them so much I know I will continue to use them in the classroom as well. Another fantastic free math resource from the Math Learning Center is the Family Support page. There, you can select a grade level to get information in Spanish and English on ways to support students at home with various math concepts as well as links to games and puzzles for students to practice various math skills. 
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LESSONS
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REFERENCES
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ASSESSMENT

Seesaw: Digital Learning Platform

I used the Seesaw learning platform to deliver lessons and practice to students while conducting my action research. Whether you are teaching virtually or in the classroom, you will want to familiarize yourself with this amazing student engagement tool. With Seesaw, educators can easily create assignments using images, text, drawings, audio, and video recordings. Students have the same capabilities to respond to activity prompts, allowing for multiple modalities to show learning. Both the free and paid versions give educators access to a vast library of activities made by other teachers. During the course of completing this masters program, I also became a Seesaw Ambassador by going through the Seesaw Pioneer program and completing several trainings that really helped me improve my use of the multifaceted tool. If you already use Seesaw and you'd like to maximize the potential of Seesaw, I encourage you to join the Pioneer Program to gain access to several how-to videos that will make using Seesaw even easier for you and more engaging for your students.

Encouraging Collaboration

You might want your students to be more interactive in class but aren't sure how to get started. Having several conversations with your class as a whole first is key. Sentence frames will be helpful, especially for any students already struggling with learning the language of the classroom as a second language. During my action research, we began by writing down a few important sentence frames in our journals together in order to reference later on during partner work. These were quite simple but effective:
  • "What should we do now?"   "¿Qué hacemos ahora?"
  • "What do you think?"           "¿Qué piensas tú?
  • "I think we should..."           "Yo pienso que..."
  • "Do you agree?"                  "¿Estás de acuerdo?"
  • "I agree."                            "Estoy de acuerdo."
  • "Could you explain..."           "¿Puedes explicar...?"
Before peer teaching begins, students need to think about what they will do to help when their partners are shy and silent or when one person is doing all the talking. Giving students the strategies and sentence frames to collaborate successfully before peer teaching begins will help ensure that more students are able to problem solve and get past initial hiccups as they begin to work with peers. After the first sentence frames are mastered, additional and more elaborate sentence frames can be added. The following video by Edutopia is a great example of how another teacher helped her students build positive peer connections tied to academic conversations by using "Talk Moves."