Week 10: Technology for teaching Literacy and Mathematics

TECHNOLOGY FOR TEACHING LITERACY:
Content: Kindergarten Language Arts Standard 3, Objective 5, Indicators A: "Substitute initial sound (e.g., replace the first sound in mat to /s/, say sat)" and B: "Substitute initial sound to create new words (e.g., replace the first sound in mat with letters of the alphabet)."
Pedagogy: Through this lesson, children will be taught by explicit instruction and using their inquiry process skills. In order for children to learn to read, phonological and phonemic awareness are crucial. Being able to manipulate, substitute, delete, morph, etc. phonemes within words is a key indicator of later reading success. This lesson will focus on orally manipulating phonemes which can help children recognize (orally) that the pieces of words can be taken away and other pieces can be added and you can have a new word.
Technology: Through the internet resource "Internet4Classrooms Kindergarten Resources" and then by clicking on "Phonics" you are lead to a long list of great websites and activities to help teach phonics and phonological awareness. Then by clicking on number 24 "Phonemic Segments- Deletion and Substitution" it takes you to a website called "Lanolin's Greenhouse." Here a friendly sheep holds up a picture of a simple word (man, cat, boy, etc.) and orally asks you to take off either the first or last sound and replace it with a new sound. They have 2 plants: one with a picture of the correct answer, and another with an incorrect but slightly close answer.
This can definitely be used within a literacy lesson. As the students work up the skills to get to the point where they can understand phoneme manipulation (after phoneme identification, isolation, etc), this can be used to help them solidify their skills. After teaching the students how phonemes can be deleted and added onto existing words, this program can show them that many words sound similar but are very different in actuality. In the screen shot above, it shows a picture of a man and the program asks the students to take off the /m/ sound and replace it with a /c/ sound- they do not sound out the word they are supposed to find but they have a picture of the one they are supposed to sound out (and a picture of one close to what it sounds like). So the students are to click on the can, which sounds close to van. This program will help within a lesson of teaching phoneme manipulation because it shows that there are many words that have the same sound endings and beginnings but it is important to pay close attention to what is exactly being said. The students can also look for real life examples in the classroom and compare how they are sounded out.

TECHNOLOGY FOR TEACHING MATHEMATICS:
Content: Second Grade Mathematics, Standard 1, Objective 2, Indicators A: "Divide geometric shapes into two, three, or four equal parts and identify the parts as halves, thirds, or fourths" and/or C: "Represent the unit fractions 1/2, 1/3, and 1/4 with objects, pictures, words (e.g., ___out of ___ equal parts), and symbols."
Pedagogy: Through classifying and processing data the students will learn the symbolic relationships between fractions as a visual and as a symbol/numerator and denominator. They will describe these relationships of fractions and construct hypotheses of relationships and equivalences.
Technology: Through the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives and by clicking on "Number and Operations" under the "Pre-K-2" tab and scrolling down and clicking on "Fractions-Parts of a Whole" it leads to an activity that looks like this:
This shows the the relationship between the parts of a whole unit to written description and fraction. The students can play around with the parts of the "pie" and what it looks like in a fraction and as written out. They can change how many pieces make up a whole (5 fifths, 8 eighths, etc) and see what the fractions look like for that many pieces.

The other activity can be found under the MathTools website. By searching "Math 2" and the topic "Fractions" you come up with a long list of fraction visual manipulatives. Then you can click on "Fractions- Comparing" and you see an activity like this:
This allows students to play around with fractions. They are to find the equivalences to certain fractions. They are given the red and blue already shaded in and they can increase or decrease the pieces that make up the whole. It shows that the shaded area can be 1/2 or 3/6's, etc.

Both of these activities could tie into learning about fractions. The students can refer to either activity to solidify the concepts learned. If a student is having trouble understanding how the symbol of the "pie" equals the written version, I can send them to work with the first activity and they can manipulate the "pie" and the written fraction and see how they both change and see the relation between the two when they do. If a student is having trouble with equivalences between fractions I can use the second activity to show them that 2 written fractions may have all different numbers but they still mean the exact same thing (they can see that the shaded area never changes, no matter how many pieces make up the whole).