challenges – iLearn Technology

Plus Happy Numbers: Free Monthly Math challenges for the primary classroom

April 21, 2018Kelly Tenkely1 Comment157795 views

What it is: Plus Happy Numbers is a free kindergarten through second-grade site with monthly math challenges. Teachers can sign up for a free classroom account and assign the monthly math challenge for students to solve. The challenges are designed to tap into higher-order thinking skills and build problem solving cognitive skills like visual spatial thinking. Students each receive their own login so that individual progress can be tracked and reported back to you. Plus Happy Numbers is designed to be used on any device that you have in your classroom including iPad and Mac (via Safari), Chromebook, PC and Andriod (via Google Chrome). Each lesson comes with audio support for early or struggling readers. Students simply click on the speaker icon for audio directions.

How to integrate Plus Happy Numbers into your classroom: Plus Happy Numbers makes for an excellent math center activity for your students. Each lesson comes with visual modeling of a concept, on-screen manipulatives, immediate feedback and remediation of errors, and adaptive scoring that provides just the right amount of practice a student needs to master a concept. Plus Happy Numbers is a great place for students to build mathematical thinking indpendently while you work with smaller groups of students or one-on-one.

I appreciate that Plus Happy Numbers goes beyond computational understanding and seeks to create students who think, and approach, problems like a mathematician by building number flexibility, problem solving, and higher-order thinking. Plus Happy Numbers can be used as a supplement in any k-2 classroom. Each month, a new Challenge of the Month is designed to stretch students’ mathematical thinking and problem solving skills. As students successfully progress through a challenge, the difficulty of the problems increases. Student progress is saved so they can pick up right where they left off. At the end of the month, you can print out a certificate of completion.

Obviously a 1:1 environment is ideal, each student can work on these challenges simultaneously. If 1:1 isn’t your reality, fear not! The individual student login means that you can bookmark plus.happynumbers.com on classroom devices so that your students can login to their account. In this scenario, use Plus Happy Numbers as a math center rotation in your classroom. The challenges are broken down so that students can complete a challenge in as little as 2-8 minutes. If you have a projector-connected computer or interactive whiteboard, you could also complete challenges as a class, discussing each challenge as your students progress through and giving students turns to solve at the board.

Tips: If you already have a Happy Numbers account, you are already on your way to using Plus! Just use the same login information and you are ready to start assigning challenges.

DIY: a maker site for kids

March 8, 2013March 8, 2013Kelly Tenkely1 Comment5000 views

What it is: I LOVE everything about this site. It truly embodies everything I love about learning and technology. DIY is an online club for kids to earn maker skills. Kids (otherwise known as Makers) share their creations and work with a larger online community and collect patches for the skills they learn. Each skill has a set of challenges that help kids learn different techniques and create something fantastic. When a child completes a maker challenge, they can add photos and video to their online portfolio to show off their creation. DIY is a website where kids get a public portfolio, an app that they can use to upload videos and pictures of their projects, makers can choose to do challenges to earn “Skills” badges, and a parent dashboard where teachers or parents can follow along on all activity.

Maker identities are always secure, children are asked to choose an animal and a nickname to help protect their privacy. Parents get access to see what their kids are posting online.

I love that this site encourages creativity, reflective portfolios and using technology constructively. It is an outstanding balance of online and offline activity!

How to integrate DIY into the classroom: At Anastasis, we strive to encourage a maker community. We do have a 1:1 iPad environment. For many, this equates to a technology rich environment (it is) where everything is done or consumed on a device. I can think of nothing sadder than reducing learning to a device! We most often use our technology to capture and share our learning. DIY is a fantastic site that makes way for kids to be curious about the world around them, create something new and use technology to innovate.

DIY is a great place to help students discover the love and joy of being a learner and a creator. It fosters a classroom culture of innovation and sharing of learning and accomplishment. So many of the challenges incorporate learning that support standards and other learning that is “required” in the classroom. These challenges would be great to take on as individual makers, in small groups of makers, or to tackle as a whole class. Don’t think of DIY as an “extra” thing to add into your classroom routine. Instead, look through the challenges through the lens of how it can enhance the learning objectives in your classroom. Embrace the maker culture in your classroom and allow room for creativity and innovation. The inquiry model of learning lends itself beautifully toward this. DIY could be the catalyst to making the shift away from more traditional learning and into an inquiry based model.

Tips: Instead of assigning “traditional” homework (read: piles of worksheets), assign a challenge from the DIY site. Better yet, let students choose their own challenge to tackle and make time in the classroom for them to share their creations and accomplishments.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using DIY in your classroom.