Top O' the Mornin!
This year Mrs. Linse will be performing as a storyteller and a fiddler during 3 sessions in the Auditorium on St. Patrick's Day. She will be joined by brave student storytellers who have been learning this craft in an enrichment class. Each session should be around 20 min.
The times: 10:15, 11:45, and 2:30
JUST SIGN UP: Want a one shot St. Patrick's Day-connected lesson that will unlock a year's worth of fun? Let your librarian teach "How to Make a Treasure Hunt" to your whole class. I will teach them how to leave 3 different kinds of clues (map, directions, riddles) and backtrack their path for success. This is such a great logic activity with a dash of writing and a map review.
Zearn
Zearn was recommended by our 8:1:1 team because it involves re-teaching before the student activities. For students who need a lot of reinforcement, this could be important. This nonprofit is focused on K-5 curric. Here's their overview video. It appears to be free to individuals.
Splash Learn
SplashLearn wants every child to have their own login and personalized path, kinda like RAZ. You may remember we had a few of the Splash Math games on our old ipads [that I will die bitter about] and they were excellent. Well they've now linked all of those in a sort of "path" and compiled the students' data on a teacher dashboard. This is really slick game based learning. Overview video here.
Education.com
This is $150 a year. Like Splash Math or Raz, they want each student to have their own login for personalized assignments, so the teacher controls a class dashboard. Some of the work is print based, some of it is digital. Ed.com shows you their entire suite of options without ever having to login. So go here, and you can see the selections for 3rd grade math. Look at the limiter headings and sidebar to further sort their activities. Ed.com includes reading, writing, foreign language, science, art, and more.
IXL
A $300 drill-based website. Your class needs to be input for individual access and assessment. It has an ELA side as well for MORE money. Here's an overview. It's unique feature is just how focused the drill work you can assign is, as can be see by this overview screen.
Khan
I'll be honest. I've tried to explore Khan academy several times for years and have found it overwhelming in scope and underwhelming in content. Here's the Math overview options for 3rd. Khan is a re-teaching environment. This site grew from a casual, volunteer-created video collection for kids who weren't learning at school. It was a kind of an amateur digital tutor. It is FREE! This might be appropriate for parents who are wanting lessons or AIS peeps. Here's an example lesson.
HoodaMath
This game-based site has been around for many years, and looks dated. It is FREE because it has ads. Here's their math page. Note: a free Tetris game is found here! The massive benefit of this website is the lack of a login! No need to input students, it's all just casual use. I tried half a dozen games and unlike ABCYa, none of them were broken due to Adobe.
Pearson Math
Pearson has 2 programs: Realize is their digital platform, but it seems to launch both Investigations and Envision-- their all digital ($$$$) platform. I don't understand the difference, but they both use Realize. Students can be assigned work but the games do not provide data to the teachers, so Holly is not a fan. Here's an overview video. The main benefit of this website is that it is entirely aligned with our curriculum AND it embeds into Google Classroom. So if you are already embedding gClassroom in your student work, this would feel natural to your students.
Prodigy
This website emulates an old school adventure video game, which is basically a skin over some math fact review questions. Here's a teacher's overview and jump to 5:35 to see the student view. Free or $60 a year for more content. The graphics are ugly but the kids LOVE it because the questions are rewarded with "battles" which makes it seem like the answers matter. Prodigy scatters the types of math facts around--like within a 5 question sequence the students can end up with 5 different areas of math. I like how the questions are supported with pop up explanations the students can choose to open if they forget, like they can click on what an "array" is.
Xtra Math
A free math fact review. Drill based, independent paths with an epically gentle human sidekick. Placement tests greet the students after you input the class. It's really quite basic and would be best used with students you want some quick data on instead of a daily activity or a substitute fun day.
From your Math Coach
When approached about this concept, Holly recommended Stanford's site: Youcubed.org which is free. It is a blend of print and online resources. The site is designed for teachers to collect bits into lesson plans for whole group instruction. There are some neat looking games.
Holly also recommended Tetris as the type of problem-solving, spatial game that does kids of all ages a lot of good! Tetris can be found for free at Hooda Math.
But Why Did Michele Pick These?
Every single website mentioned above is being used by a Victor Primary teacher. For a fantastic summary of even more choices, visit this link from the blog We Are Teachers. Pay attention to the bold tag at the end of each paragraph that summarizes grade range and cost. It has some oldies but goodies like
It also had some new ones I hadn't heard of but liked, such as
- SumDog,
- Fun Brain, and
- Mr. Nussbaum (now Mr.N365).
It also had some new ones I hadn't heard of but liked, such as
So Your iPad Won't Connect to the App Store...
Well your librarian has the answer: create a hotspot on someone's 4G account (people with data subscriptions on their phones) and connect the iPad to the hotspot instead of the guest wifi. Voila! The app store will open, although you also need to have an itunes account, even for free games. DO NOT leave your real itunes account synched on a school iPad. Logout or require a password every time. I myself have created a unique icloud account attached not to a credit card but a gift card. Thus if the ipad is ever stolen/hacked, it has no connection to my personal account. As always, if this answer overwhelms you, just ask your librarian and I will help!