How have you changed?

2020 has, in many ways, contained both stagnation and growth. The stagnation is what seems to resonate with us.  So much time at home, a limited circle of people to interact, and a school year that makes it challenging to see the desired growth in our students tend to overpower our thinking.  It is easy to focus on these things, as they are such a part of our daily lives right now.

However, there are also so many ways that we have grown in the last year. We have gained more time for self-reflection, had time to actually pursue our interests, become quite adept at Zoom meetings, and for many of us, learned how to celebrate holidays with a small circle rather than our large family gatherings.  While all of these opportunities have not been our choice, they have allowed us to look at our lives in a new light, and hopefully, there have been things we have done that we hope to continue well after this pandemic is in our rearview.

But as a math teacher, what changes have you made that you want to stick around?  Have you eliminated pages of repeated problems?  Have you put more time into the hows and whys of student work rather than the final results?  Has making math visual been a priority in your instruction? Have you been more intentional with your practices and built in routines that fit your students' needs?  Do your students see math as more than just computation? Have you offered more opportunities for creativity and critical thinking?  Does your classroom culture celebrate mistakes as steps toward growth?  

I am hopeful that some of these changes have occurred for you, and that you see the value in keeping these practices into the return of our post-pandemic world. While that world still may be many months away, these best practices are good now. Remote, hybird or in-person instruction.  Polish them up so that you have them in good shape for our return to "normal" instruction. Whenever (and whatever) that may be.  

Here we go!

Tomorrow is August, and that typically means the beginning to a school year.  And Oh! what a school year it is to be.  Like one we have never experienced before.

As we think about our students, safety is our priority, of course.  However, we also must keep in mind learning--as that is the reason the new year begins.

Instead of getting caught up in the things that our students missed without in-school learning last spring, let's think about what we as teachers always have done; let's meet our students where they are and move them forward.  We don't have to worry about teaching a third of the content from the grade before us. Let's pick them up where they are and move them into new thinking, into new content.

2020 is one that will always be remembered, we know that.  Let's not burden our students by making them feel behind or like they aren't ready for their new grade.  Let's build them up, and build them into students with knowledge and understanding.  It is what is best, and it will relieve the pressure on them--and you. 

Good luck in 2020 whether it be in-person, online, or a little bit of both!

  

Looking for Virtual Manipulatives?

While we are still unsure how our instruction will be delivered in the fall, there is one thing we are sure of....student's involvement in the concrete phase of learning math is important!

Sending home concrete manipulatives for all of our students may be too costly for most schools.  Purchasing enough to send home is not the only problem: we know it is doubtful that many of these tools will return to our buildings.  With that in mind, here I am going to highlight some of the best virtual manipulatives I have been able to find and use.

I highly recommend using these with students this fall even if we are face to face.  Allowing for guided use now will make it easier should they need to use them again at some point in the year.

I have always been a fan of Math Learning Center Apps, and I have shared these apps with many teachers before! These apps have always been free and easy to access and use.  Because of the pandemic's rise in at-home schooling, they have added an extra feature!  Sharing!  Four of the apps can be set and shared with students and/or students can share with you.  There is a video explaining how this works, and I have had success with it myself.  There are many great apps here.  Some of my favorites include the Number Rack, the Number Line, and the Partial Product Finder.  However, I can think of many great uses of the other apps.  I just have not used them myself in a classroom.

These are the apps that allow sharing at this time.

Toy Theater also has a great selection of virtual manipulatives. I do not have as much experience with these, but it has some great ones such as interactive hundreds and mulitiplication charts, a variety of counters, dice, and some graphing apps.  I think it could meet a lot of needs!

A great variety

Didax also has free online manipulatives. I have only found these while I've been sheltering at home, so I do not have experience in the classroom with them.  You'll find many that are available above, but here you will also find linking cubes and a math balance!  It also has algebra tiles and prime factor tiles that can be used in middle grades. (because manipulatives are just as important there!)

A few other places that you can find specialty links:

MathToybox has a Cuisenaire rods app.

ABCYa has some fraction tiles that are nice.

I hope you can take some time to explore these apps and find the ones that will work best for you and your students' needs!  It might be a good way to start the school year, whether we are virtual or in-person, to spend some time walking students through these tools, how to get to them, and how to use them.  That way, when the time arises, they will be able to use them more independently!  Remind them that they can use them and explore with them whenever they want.  Exploring these tools independently helps students to see relationships and make sense of it all on their own.

The other thing that is great about these virtual tools is that you can use them to create your visuals for your SMART docs, Google slides, or student tasks.  Math is visual, and these provide us with good ways to show the math to our students.

I hope we have the chance to use concrete manipulatives in August with our students, but now is the time to prepare in case we don't.  I hope you can find tools at some of these sites that match the ones your students typically use in the classroom.

In These Uncertain Times...

The world is so unsettled now, as we try to maneuver through these scary waters. As teachers, we are doing all that we can to help our students feel safe even though we have to do this through technology. I think what unsettles everyone the most is not knowing how long this will last.  We hear different predictions and ideas every day about the length of this stay at home world.  We just want to see our students and have some closure to our school year.  However, this is not in our control either.

What is in our control is offering some normalcy to our lives and our student lives.  As we do this though, we may sometimes become overzealous and expect things from our students that they don't have the support to complete from home. Give yourself some grace.  You can't make up for the interaction that would have happened if we were in our schools. If you are meeting with your students online or giving them tasks to complete, keep it simple.  Read a book, write a letter, solve a puzzle, play a game, help fix dinner tonight...these are all appropriate assignments that keep our students and their parents from being overwhelmed by school as well as by world events.  

I hope this ends sooner rather than later.  I hope that a vaccine is found.  I know that when it is found, teachers are some of the people who helped to develop the doctor who finds the vaccine. This has always been true because teachers believe in their students. 

I also know that the entire world is holding its breath right now.  Do what you can to help your students feel safe.  Don't feel obligated to have them complete large amounts of work.  Believe in them and that they will be okay when this is over. All will be okay.