When I look at how educators should tech up the math, I look at three different things. So, I'm going to take you through those three different things, and I use those three different things regardless of whether I'm using Wixie, and then I'm going to show you why Wixie is such a good program to do these things with. So, they're going to be visualized for V, multimodal for M, and then interaction for I. So, V means, does the tech tool allow students to visualize the math concept in a way not possible without the technology? I spend a lot of time with my teachers at my school, I'm a tech coach at my school, we're not going to go and use a program if it's not giving them a way to visualize that they couldn't have before, whether they couldn't access in that way.
M really talks about that multimodal. I used to say when I was talking about Wixie that I had magic five now with the speech to text, I kind of feel like it's six, but our students have, do they have to share their thinking in one way or do they have some choice? And then I, does that tech tool empower our students to interact with their classmates or their teachers' math thinking? This is one a lot of times when we think of working with younger students in the elementary setting, we're like, oh, they can't do that, but they really can, and so I'm going to show you some ways where you can do that. So now let's dig a little deeper into Wixie.
So when we talk about that visualization, there's a couple of ways I love to do that with my students. If you haven't discovered the ability to clone, it's in that edit menu, and if you go to properties, you can clone. That allows you to make infinite copies of an image, and you'll see I use that a lot in the work that I do with my students because it gives them those virtual manipulatives that never run out.
The spray can is something I discovered last year. I'm going to be honest with you, I hated the spray can when I first started using it, and one of my first grade students showed me that it could be a manipulative. Now, with my students who are, my kindergartners who are using iPads, it definitely works better with touch.
Sometimes when my students try to click, it doubles up, but it's real, and you'll see some activities where I've used that. It's really wonderful to be able to give your students that ability to use a manipulative of their own choice, and then the idea of duplicating images. One of my students, we were using a clone sticker, and we were doing tens and ones, and one of my students goes, this is taking forever.
I have to do like 18 tens. Well, they realized that they selected something and clicked that adapt, and the plus sign that they could duplicate really easier. Sometimes our students find more efficient ways to do things.
When we talk about that multimodal, I love all the ways Wixie lets our students share their thinking. Like I said, that text, that speech to text has been so important. The students really at my school have really been enjoying it.
The text, images, video. We've done some really cool stuff with video this year. Audio, we always forget that sometimes our students don't want to be on video, they just want to record, and then obviously that paintbrush.
So lots of different ways to share. You're not giving them a piece of paper and saying everybody has to share that same way. And then lastly, the interaction.
A lot of times I don't think we think about this as in the elementary school setting as much as we should. Wixie has a team option, and so you have a couple of options. You can have students, really? You can have students work together in teams.
And as they're working together in teams, you can have them then see each other's work and comment on it. So that's one way of doing that. The other way of doing that is in the file menu, you can always import pages from other projects.
So you can make your class book that way as well. Sometimes I don't think we think about those things. In addition, I didn't use it for this project, but under the edit menu, since I have it open, you can also add Wixie projects and Wixie pages in that way as well.
So, or web pages. So, you know, you might be able to do it that way as well. The goal is, is we don't want our students to think that the work they're doing is just for, for, you know, you.
We really want them to think about what audience, you know, that they can have a bigger audience than that. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to give you an overview of some of the activities that I've been doing with my students. My goal is I want to make sure as we're doing this that I give you some time to explore too.
And that's one of the reasons why I'm going to show you, give you time to explore, and then we're going to come back together. Now, obviously, as you're exploring, if you have any questions, I want you to ask them. So on this slide right here, it links to each of these grade levels.
When it comes to using Wixie and math, I've primarily used a K to three. Obviously you can use it in other grade levels. So, but I want you to look, even if you teach an upper grade and think about, well, I see how this one works.
Maybe I could do something like this. I'm going to take you through these and give you a little bit of an overview. So I'm going to start with kindergarten.
And this is one of the spray paint ones. All of these are active links. This is called number detectives.
And in this activity, thank you. I did not want to stay logged into anything. I'm not sure why it keeps kicking me out.
In this activity, what students are doing is they're making sure they can identify a missing number. So the students will go through here. One, two, they can use the text or they can use the paint brush to write in that missing number.
And this was an activity we did already this year. I love this one because this one here gives our students that chance to try something different. I'm going to go and hopefully in demo mode and it won't kick me out.
So when we go on this one, our students, if we want, they can click on that spray can find one that they like. I'm going to pick the dog and go one, two, three. I also had students who liked using the paintbrush and they made that paintbrush bigger.
One, two, three. It gives them lots of options. And so that's there for them.
Now, one of the new things I've started to do this year is Wixie has a lot of pre-made activities that are in choice board format. And you'll notice at the end of this one, I put a counting choice board. Now, the reason I do that is because all of our students are moving at different paces by no means.
So I think they're going to get to all of these activities, but by doing these activities the way and giving them something to do when they finish, that definitely helps. You'll also notice for this one, I'm not giving them all the tools. I'm only giving them the tools that they need.
It is just kicking me out left and right. It must be retired from a full day. So when we go to our next one, and I'm going to not go in quite as much because it seems to want to kick me out a lot tonight.
I don't know why that never happens during the day. This next one in kindergarten, there we go, is making coin caterpillars. It's using that cloning ability, allowing our students to count coins.
This one down here allows our students to take those green dots, make those two numbers, and then using these words on the bottom, compare them. And then this one is very similar to the top one, but it's using teen numbers. When first grade comes into the picture, there's that same example with the spray can, except for this time, they're adding it into circles.
I also allow them to draw circles. That's one of our standards. There's that dot one again.
This is one on magnitude, which number makes the most sense for this? Since everything can be read to our students, this is something that they can do independently. I'm going to take a chance and open this and hope it doesn't kick me out. This is one of the new ones we've made this year, and it's one of my favorites.
So I do want to make sure I especially give you a chance to see this. So this one is talking about story problems. The students get to listen to this, use the pen to add numbers in, and then they get to choose how to solve.
This is their toolbox. Do they want to use tens frames? Do they want to use dots? Do they want to use the dog? Do they want to use the paintbrush, or do they want to use video to explain? Giving our students lots of ways to explain. If we wanted to, we could even spotlight a few and then let the students see each other's work.
So I love this one because it's getting them to really do that. And once again, you're going to see, and this one actually does have magic stickers in it, giving our students that chance to have something if they finish early. So lots of fun with that one.
In our second grade, and I'm hoping you're seeing this build, choice boards. Wixie makes a lot of great choice boards. In this one, I have two of the ones that I've made.
There's a primary geometry choice board in here using activities that were already part of Wixie, and then one that I made adding some activities from Wixie and some activities from other places. This second grade one with the spinner probability once again allows our students to use one of those magic stickers again since we mentioned that. So students are able to spin and then tally.
So trying to find some of those opportunities are $2 using that cloning. This one is also using cloning. So I was working with my first grade and we made this activity, and I was like, wait a minute, my third graders are doing multiplication and it's pretty similar.
So our third graders this year did this activity, which is just like the other one, it's just going into multiplication. I also love activities like this, and I don't know if you've tried anything like this. This is where everyone has to show a different way to do a half.
This is one of those interactions, everyone's in the same group, they each get part of this, and they can work. So Kaylin, that's a great question. Some of these are made by me, and some of them are made by Wixie.
