Technology Usage

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I use technology in several ways in class. My students often use i-Ready and/or ALEKS for differentiated practice. Daily, I utilize powerpoints and music in class to keep the class engaged.

i-Ready

My students use i-Ready both for a growth monitoring tool and as a supplementary instruction tool. I have students frequently use i-Ready to preview upcoming lessons if they have mastered the material and many of their other classmates have not, or to have students review old material that they have not yet mastered but many of their classmates have. Since i-Ready lets me assign different assignments to each student, I am able to customize each student’s learning path to their needs.

For example, I assigned a few students to re-learn proportional relationships using i-ready because they did not master recognizing proportional relationships or using equations. By using i-Ready, the students were able to work at their own pace and master the material:

Student who needed to relearn proportional relationships able to master the material through i-Ready lessons.

Student who needed to relearn proportional relationships able to master the material through i-ready lessons, even though it took him twice.

Another student had already mastered adding and subtracting positive and negative integers, so I had them preview upcoming lessons by working on expressing fractions as decimals and creating equivalent expressions:

Student able to work ahead through i-Ready lessons.

ALEKS

My intervention class uses ALEKS to master their own custom learning path.

I am able to track individual progress on ALEKS

Students take notes about their customized ALEKS lessons in their notebooks.

Students are able to work at their own pace in their notebooks on their customized ALEKS lessons.

I can track on ALEKS, as seen to the image on the left, how many topics each student has learned and how close they are to mastering all of the topics in 7th grade math intervention. I have students keep their work inside of their notebooks each week.

Powerpoints and Music

Some examples of my daily powerpoints:

Powerpoint on Negative Fractions

Powerpoint on the Distributive Property

I have increasingly included more timers on each part of the powerpoint for both myself and students to keep track of our timeliness and frequently incorporate instrumental music during work time. By using a powerpoint, students can follow along more easily on their guided notes than if I were free-handing at the board.

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