Thursday, November 12, 2009

Topic 14 - Technology Is Much Better Than Paper!

This week we started multiplication in math. This is an exciting time for 3rd graders. :-) In the past, I have had my students draw their own multiplication problems and tell a story about them. I do this because it helps me see if they truly understand the meaning of multiplication. I decided to try something new this year and have them draw their stories in Pixie (which is our district's drawing software). THEY LOVED IT! This was a very basic technology tool, but I was amazed by how it truly helped my students understand the concept. Sometimes they don't understand "equal groups" and Pixie allowed them to choose the same picture of groups and it helped them visuals and articulate the meaning.

They created 4 of their own multiplication stories and today they used objects around the room and created multiplication stories. For example, I had a group of boys who put all of my large dice on the number 5 and showed me that 6 dice with 5 of them showed 30 dots. Once the students wrote down their multiplication story and showed it to me, I took a picture of it with my digital camera. Tomorrow we are going to make a "multiplication movie" using Photo Story. My kids are so eager to do this and I've never seen students so excited to learn and show multiplication.

My students are so lucky to have the technology available to them that they do. I truly think that technology can enhance the way we learn and this lesson proved that.

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