Week of November 12

Thursday Thoughts November 12

 

 

 

We have one week to go until Thanksgiving Break!  I am very excited.  I love Thanksgiving (especially when I do not have to host the dinner).  In our fast paced lives, it is important to take some time to reflect on what is most important....family and friends.  We give all that we have to our students and it often comes at a great price to our loved ones.  We spend hours upon hours lesson planning, grading papers and doing countless other tasks.  Needless to say, our families often get the leftovers.  Please take the upcoming time off to spend quality time with your family and carve out a little time for yourself.   Happy Thanksgiving!

 

Staff Spotlight

This week I would like to shine the spotlight on Paula Bell.  I wish I could explain to you the scope and importance of Paula's job.  Let's just say that she has to dot every "I" and cross every "T".  She accounts for all money that comes in and out and there is no margin for error.  Recently we were commended for a perfect audit.  That is definitely something to brag about.   But the spotlight on Paula is about more than her "job".  It is about the extra things that she does around Medlock.  Many times I will mention something to her that I want done and then and leave the details up to her to figure out.  I know she loves that about me!  She takes pride in our school and wants the very best for the staff. She is creative always looks for ways to bring the staff  together.   I am thankful for Paula and the way that she looks out for MBES.

Personalized Learning

12 Of The Best Math Apps For Kids

by TeachThought Staff

Introducing students to new ideas is a matter of both art and science.
How do you frame the content? How do you stimulate curiosity, or establish a need to know? Which student is ready for what content, and how do you know?
This is all true whether you’re introducing students to concepts (e.g., literary symbolism), or skills (e.g., dividing fractions). One powerful way to introduce students to new ideas is to let them “play” with these ideas. If a coach wanted a baseball player to understand how to swing a bat, he wouldn’t make him watch a PowerPoint. Instead, he’d hand him a bat, watch him swing, and provide him with feedback.
Of course, it’s not that simple with everything (may not make sense to hand a student $1000 to let them “make sense of” financial literacy), but the idea of letting students interact–on their own, as they will–with new ideas make sense. Technology is adept at providing this kind of opportunity. Tablets like the iPad (as well as those from Microsoft and Android) host countless apps (of varying quality) to support this.
In pursuit, we created a collection of 12 of the best math apps for kids–specifically, elementary school students. We focused on the kinds of apps that introduce students to concepts, as well as those that let students practice and progress. Better yet, many are adaptive learning apps, adjusting in difficulty to meet an individual student at their level. Some (e.g., ProdigyGame) also feature dashboards as well for both teachers and students track progress over time.

12 Of The Best Math Apps For Kids

Terry Heick
Owner

  Learn Math For Free. Forever.                        

Prodigy Math Game - Free, Common Core aligned math game for grades 1-8
Prodigy's adaptive math video game is an entire virtual world where children can play and learn with friends at a pace that's right for them. Prodigy takes game-based learning a step further and provides teachers with useful features like:
*Assessment tools to align the game to the classroom and easily assign homework
*Real-time reports to easily track student progress and identify trouble spots
*Rich Common Core-aligned math content, including more advanced problem solving questions
*A built-in diagnostic test

 

Sumdog

On Sumdog, students have a great time - but their teachers retain full control over their work. At the simplest level, you can simply log in and choose which subject they'll play. If you have a little more time, you can edit the default Progress Hub™ skill plan to match the order in which you teach; Sumdog will lead your students through the skills in this order.

 

Motion Math: Pizza!

Learn economics and mental math as you buy ingredients, design pizzas, set prices, and serve customers in this delightfully delicious simulation game. The player decides whom to buy ingredients from, what to stock up on, the look of your pizzas, the names, and the pricing. To succeed in Motion Math: Pizza!, you’ve got to strategize and know your math. Find the best price, evaluate your costs, and add and multiply at the cash register to satisfy your customers!

Quick Math - Multiplication Table & Arithmetic Game

Quick Math is perfect for students in grades 3 to 6, or for anyone wanting to improve their general math skills. With multiple difficulty levels and a focus on self-improvement, Quick Math provides increasing challenges as your skills develop. Other features:

• Practice mental addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and mixed operations
• Develop arithmetic fluency and improve mental strategies
• Practice pre-algebra skills by calculating unknown values and using inverse operations
• Practice handwriting

Reflex Student

Reflex is a research-based system that helps grade 2-8 students to develop instant, effortless recall of math facts in all four operations. Students have already answered billions of math facts on Reflex, increasing their skill, confidence and test scores.

• A highly adaptive environment that continually adjusts to create the optimal learning experience for every child
• Fun and motivational game-based learning, so students enjoy using the program and take pride in their success
• Outstanding results for students of all ability levels across grades 2-8.

Number Line, by the Math Learning Center

Number Line helps students visualize number sequences and illustrate strategies for counting, comparing, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing whole numbers. The number line can be labeled with multiples of any whole number from 1 to 100.

Number Rack, by The Math Learning Center

Number Rack facilitates the natural development of children’s number sense. The movable, colored beads encourage learners to think in groups of fives and tens, helping them to explore and discover a variety of addition and subtraction strategies.
This virtual version of the manipulative is an open-ended educational tool, ideal for elementary classrooms and other learning environments that use iPod Touches, iPhones, or iPads.

• Display 1 to 5 rows of beads, 10 beads per row. On the iPad, display up to 10 rows.
• Hide beads with the resizable shade, which allows teachers or learners to model subtraction or difference problems.
• Reverse the colors of rows 6 to 10 to distinguish (or not) groupings of 25 beads.
• Use the drawing tools to annotate work and show understanding
• Write equations and expressions with the text tool.

Number Pieces, by the Math Learning Center

Number Pieces helps students develop a deeper understanding of place value while building their computation skills with multi-digit numbers. Students use the number pieces to represent multi-digit numbers, regroup, add, subtract, multiply, and divide.

Pizza Fractions 1

In chef's pizzeria your child masters the concept of naming simple fractions using pizza picture examples. Designed for grade levels 2-5, Pizza Fractions provides introductory practice with fractions in an approachable game-like environment.

• players presented with randomly generated fractions to identify by counting slices of pizza
• entry level simple fractions build confidence with denominators 1-12, excluding sevenths and elevenths
• adjustable level of difficulty allows beginners to start with easier fractions and progress as they learn
• option to advance questions by shaking the device or using a button
• score data and round timing allows you and your child to compete by alternating rounds

iTooch Elementary School App

With more than 25,000 exercises, iTooch Elementary is a new and fun way of practicing and learning Math, Language Arts and Science for 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th or 5th Graders.

‣ Speech synthesis to help young users in reading and text comprehension
‣ Multi-player management
‣ Font size adjustment to suit everyone’s needs
‣ An embedded calculator

10 Frame Fill

"10 Frame Fill" provides children practice with recognizing additive "10 Families" (e.g., 1 and 9, 2 and 8, etc.). Set the 10 Frame to fill in sequence or randomly. Use contrasting color chips to fill the 10 frame as you determine the answer. Select to show a corresponding number sentence

Montessori Numbers - Math Activities for Kids

Montessori Numbers offers a sequence of guided activities that gradually help children reinforce their skills. Each activity offers several levels of increasing complexity.

• Learn to count up to 999
• Experiment with quantities and learn their names
• Learn the numerals and their names
• Associate quantities with numerals/numbers

Habitudes- (Growth Mindset)

Looking Ahead
We are scheduled to undergo major renovations this summer.  Below please find the link that provides the details.  The school board is scheduled to vote on our proposed renovations next week.

http://www.boarddocs.com/ga/fcss/Board.nsf/files/A3VLCP5296B7/$file/Medlock%20Bridge%20ES%20Scope%20Summary.pdf

 

Week of November 5

Thursday Thoughts November 5

 

 

 

 

This evening I had the pleasure of serving as a guest speaker for teenagers through an organization called Opportunity Knocks.  This is a nonprofit that works with troubled teens living in various group homes.  I was able to eat with them, fellowship and hopefully I encouraged them to hang in there.  Life is tough for these young people and they have experienced things that many of us could not even imagine.  In spite of their circumstances, they had the ability to joke and laugh and even opened up about what inspires them.  The kids were amazing and I hope I get a chance to see them again.  If you ever think that what you are going through is unbearable, make time to connect and interact with people whose journey is much different than yours. It will change your perspective and maybe even how you look at your own life.

 

Staff Spotlight

This week I would like to shine the spotlight on Chris Bellagamba.  Chris continues to set the bar high for herself and her students.  This year she has stepped up to participate on the Superintendent's Advisory Council, the Teacher Leadership Forum (the compensation reform task force as I like to call it) and the Assessment Leaders Cohort. This is all being done while providing the highest quality instruction for her students.  Chris has embraced Genius Hour and she takes hands on science to another level.   I would also be remiss if I did not mention the time and effort that she puts into our Student Council.  Our students are taking ownership of their school and the council is leading the way.   Chris is passionate about students' learning and she is always striving to improve her craft.
We are thankful for her leadership and appreciate Chris for the work she is doing to make Medlock  a great place to learn.



Personalized Learning

Medlock Bridge Instructional Model for Personalized Learning

by Medlock Personalized Learning Team

•Our model plan will support Personalized Learning in each classroom by giving teachers the autonomy to determine scheduling based on the needs of their individual students as well as their class as a whole.   We will not specify or enforce time limits for individual activities.

•Our Model plan will be used in K-5.

 

•We expect whole group instruction to be used for introduction and closing activities. The majority of instructional time will be dedicated to small group and individual learning activities.  Whole group is not the preferred method of instruction so teachers will use it as a “campfire” type activity where they quickly share plans, directions or inspiration for the day’s activities.

 

•A Station Rotation model has been utilized at MBES for several years.  Students will continue to rotate through the stations as outlined in our model.  Teachers will be consistently re-evaluating their students’ learning and will determine what types of activities are most effective for individual students.  Students will be given some voice and choice in selection of learning activities.

 

•When classroom devices are rolled out we will continue to have our current iPads available for temporary checkout.   These can be used for for creation or exploration stations, Genius Hour,  PBL,  and other special projects.   Because Special Areas have larger class sizes the iPads will be made available for checkout by those classes as well.

 

•For the past three years our school has been consistently focused on communication,  collaboration,  creativity and critical thinking skills.  Our PL instructional plan is designed to support this initiative for our students as well as our teaching staff.

•Flexible groupings are fluid and adjusted based on student mastery of standards.
 
•Classrooms in grades 2-5 are departmentalized.   Students receive instruction based on their continuous achievement level with the opportunity to move to another level when ready.  There are some accelerated students who may receive instruction on another grade level for a particular subject.

•Teacher roles within the instructional model will vary widely depending on the needs of students.  Teachers will have the autonomy to be creative within the instructional model as they design a classroom environment that supports their students. We will provide support to ensure that each classroom model allows for effective Personalized Learning instruction, and encompasses  the 4 C’s.

 

•Teachers will monitor student progress daily,  they will design assessments,  both formal and informal to ensure that students are learning within the model.  We will use the data from observations, grade level data talks as well as results of our adaptive digital content tools (Redbird and Compass Learning/Hybridge) to ensure student success.

•Students will be given choice in many aspects of our model.  We expect them to become more knowledgeable and aware of their learning style,  choose topics within the curriculum that interest them and explore topics outside the curriculum that foster become lifelong learning.

•Students will be able to choose how they show what they have learned.  We envision a variety of technology tools in addition to many other forms of presentation.  We have already seen Genius Hour students present their learning in poetry, plays,  projects, movies and many other formats. 

•Students will be given easy access to adaptive Personalized Learning tools as well as digital content at home through our Mackin Via Digital Portal.  They will be able to use these tools to continue their learning,  work on skills that need development and explore topics that interest them.

Habitudes- (Growth Mindset)

 Looking Ahead

 

Next week is our canned food drive.  Many thanks to all who created a pumpkin character to excite the students.  

 

After Thanksgiving, we will begin our staff holiday gift card campaign.  We will identify a few of our very own Medlock students and their families in need and present them with gift cards that will allow them to purchase food and toys for the holidays. 

 

In January, our students will participate in a shoe recycling drive (derived from two 5th graders' actual Genius Hour project).  

 

Thank you for being such a generous and caring staff!