Winning Wednesdays

Each Wednesday a special event takes place at Obee and it started today. Wednesday winners is a program of tutoring in small groups for math skills review and practice.My first assignment was third grade. I had two rotations of 4 and 5 kids with the goal being practice using calculators and finding whether pairs of addition or subtraction matched each other. I found a way for them to "organize" their answers on their scrap paper to make the choice much easier to "see". Then to reinforce rechecking we redid the calculator problem with the choice we thought was the correct answer! We had a LOT of fun and the kids were very stimulated using white boards and calculators! The two groups were in my rotation for 20 minutes each.
My second group to work with were 4 boys in grade 5. Their assignment is to make a keynote then a voicethread to illustrate various math concepts. The concepts were ordered pairs, mixed numbers , fractions,improper fractions, estimating fractions and variables. The first step is to organize their ideas. They each did a sample problem of their assigned topic. We discussed words to use such as vertical, horizontal for the ordered pairs topic as an example. As we worked on the technology side of the project our challenges were to find a way to illustrate a fraction on Keynote. We learned how to make mixed numbers look like a mixed number on the slide: make the whole number large in font size and then highlight the fraction and make it smaller. Devin got that one!!
Now how to make a vertical line in keynote that fits under the horizontal number line. Connor showed all of us how to pull down the shape line that can be adjusted to be straight or at any angle and can be moved below the number line. Perfect. Devin helped us find a way to get the line thicker by going to shapes in inspector. Believe me these boys are good!
We looked up some words in a dictionary. They taught me a new quick place to find a dictionary. I have always gone online to merriamwebster.com but they said. "hey press F12 and add a dictionary to your dashboard. Which we did. There is an option for a thesaurus or dictionary in a popup window. Awesome!
We will continue to make our keynotes, perfect our content and edit, add color and then begin our transfer to Voicethreads. They were dreaming of being on YOU TUBE and I decided to show them a couple voicethreads on my blog for an example of how this is going to look on a blog. AWE... a most satisfying academic exploration, especially for me!
Something we are going to add to the assignment is a story problem for their concept as well as practical uses in everyday life involving their assigned concept. I will post some of the results. We meet just once a week on Winning Wednesday at Obee School!