Digital Age Skills: Add and Subtract Fractions and Mixed Numbers With Like Denominators
Overview
This resource was created by Eric Uher in collaboration with Karen Dux as part of the 2019-20 ESU-NDE Digital Age Pedagogy Project. Educators worked with coaches to create Lesson Plans promoting both content area and digital age skills. This Lesson Plan is designed for 4th grade math.
Lesson
Participant Name: Eric Uher
Coach Name: Karen Dux
Student Grade Level: 4
Content Area: Math
List Content Area Standard (Link to NDE Standards):
MA 4.1.2.f Add and subtract fractions and mixed numbers with like denominators.
List Digital Age Skill (Link to ISTE Standards):
1c: Students use technology to seek feedback that informs and improves their practice to demonstrate their learning in a variety of ways.
Brief Description of what Students might do to show mastery of both Content & Digital Skills:
The content standard will show mastery when they can answer the variety of questions, including open responses.
The digital age skill will be mastered because they will be able to look at what they answered and if they got it wrong why. They will also be able to check on their time spent and review the lesson if they choose on the site.
Investigate (Link to Toolkit):
Compare / Contrast 2 Tools students could use to accomplish the goal:
| Criteria (Link) | Tool: IXL | Tool: Study Island |
| Criteria 1- Relevance | 3- IXL is great in terms of getting students to answer questions, but the questions are not very deep. It doesn’t relate as well to the NSCAS test as it did to the old NeSA test. | 4- What is great about Study Island is it pulls questions from the NSCAS practice bank. The types of questions that have multiple levels to it are also on Study Island and the students are able to practice them It also pulls in their scores from NWEA and they practice where they are low. |
| Criteria 2- Feedback | 4- IXL does show the student what the answer is and how to work it. Kids do show some frustration when there “Smart Score” takes a dip. | 4- Study Island has different types of tests. One form tells them what they got wrong immediately, one lets them go through the lesson, and one also treats it like a true test and doesn’t tell them answers until after the test. |
| Criteria 3- Usability | 4-IXL is very user friendly and the students have an easy time of logging in. For younger grades, the view of all the different practice that can be offered to the students in the course of the year can be overwhelming for younger. | Study Island is easy for the students to use because it only shows the students what is assigned to them. |
Which Tool have you selected? Why?
I have selected Study Island because of how versatile it is for the students. I like that I can decide what type of tests to give them, the students like the blue ribbon count, and it even has a Kahoot type of function which the students absolutely love. I think the real game changer for me though is the fact that it asks questions that are just like what the students see on the state test. I also really like the fact that it is able to pull in their NWEA information and the students are able to work on those standard specific problems. I do wish there was an easier way for students that scored really high in the NWEA to answer harder questions, but still be in their grade level. However, I have been very impressed by how it has been enjoyed by the students.
Description: What will students do?
Study Island says that students need to spend 30 min/week on the site to make a positive impact. I have the option to build my own test with questions from their bank or I can make my own. The students will login and click on the class they are in (math, language arts, science, NWEA, etc). Then it gives them their list of things to work on.
Rubric Assessment: How will you grade student work? (Include link to rubric)
I don’t need to do a rubric for the students work because it shows me the information about the test. It will tell me what they missed and how they missed it. It will also tell me how long they spent trying to complete it.
Link to Exemplary student work:
Recommendations: What went well / What would you do differently?
Now that I know how this works, I would try to implement this more into a lesson, but it doesn’t need to be done every day. This gives me some wiggle room on when to give it and when they need extra practice. I am also wanting to try and make more built tests on my own and not just what the site is generating.