Not too long ago (ok, longer ago than I care to admit) I visited Southview Public School for a co-plan, co- teach, co-debrief day between Limestone DSB and Hastings and Prince Edward DSB. The nice thing about this visit was that I had some company for the drive with Obadiah, technical and innovations manager at ABEL. He came along to participate in the day and shoot some video interviews of the teachers. If you haven’t seen our multi-district video, click here to check it out.
LDSB and HPEDSB teamed up for their multi-district Learning Connections Project. The two districts purchased a set of iPad minis for the classes involved in each district. Their goal was to investigate how the integration of iPads can be used to enhance literacy and numeracy instruction. They approached this through a co-plan, co-teach, co-debrief model and divided their teachers into two groups: primary and junior teachers. The primary teachers addressed literacy: sound level phonemic awareness; letter awareness; phonics; word practice read; time read or playback while the junior teachers addressed numeracy: the Math Processes through problem solving.
On the day of our visit, the junior teachers were going into a math class in LDSB. Teachers planned the lesson along with the activities and questions that were going to be asked of the students. The minds-on problem was: show a pattern that is half yellow. The activity problem was: create a pattern that is 1/3 yellow and 2/3 red. For the activity, students created their pattern and then took a photo with the iPads. The iPads were then passed to a different group who then used Explain Everything app to explain the other group’s pattern. We were included in the class activities to observe students, but not influence their work. It was so interesting to see how different solutions came about and how some students were unsure if their answers were correct (they did their patterns by counting the pieces to make the fractions, not by area – most students did it by area). It was evident that adding the technology to the process helped the students since they could: take a photo of their pattern instead of drawing which meant they could create more complicated patterns; they could record their voice and not have to write their explanations; they could easily project their solutions using the Air Server to share their answers. It was also evident that the students wanted their patterns to be more complex when they realized that their photos were going to be shared to the class.
During our de-brief, the following was discussed:
- the technology supported the students when they had to share their understanding since they could record or type their explanations
- it is important to remember that students will sometimes still need the manipulatives to see the answer and we have to guide our students to determine when it is helpful to use the technology and when it is not
- the iPads didn’t really change the activity as this could have been done on chart paper, however,
- the technology made it easier for students to change their design using iPads, they could listen to their explanation and improve them, and students could easily change their writing if they didn’t like it (no scribbling out – no rough work…)
Thank you for the great day LDSB and HPEDSB!