Patterns in a Table

Fourth grade students tend to struggle with Patterns in a Table.  For some reason, this math objective really trips them up.  After the students were feeling confident with the working the problems paper and pencil, I switched things up and let them create their own problems using the Pages app on their iPads.  

Thank you Zoe for this brilliant example.

We started on day one of this project spending about ten minutes creating our table.  This is really a 5 minute activity, but since this was the first time for many of my students to make tables in Pages, we had a brief lesson.  Day 2, the class spent about 15 minutes creating their word problems and adding pictures to their documents.   For a twenty minute activity, I think they are pretty nifty!  Tomorrow, I will  randomly distribute copies of the problems for the students to solve.

Tips for using in your classroom:

• Give a quick lesson on "text wrapping" and how to change it.  Many of my kids were upset because the text wrapping feature wouldn't allow them to put the pictures as close to the tables as they would like.
• Less is best.  It is an uphill battle, but I am trying to get the kids to understand that a document does not look better with 14 pictures and 25 emojis.

Weathering, Erosion and Deposition Posters

In Science, we are learning about slow changes that the Earth undergoes (weathering, erosion, and deposition).  Yesterday, we went on a scavenger hunt, looking for evidence of these changes around the school.  Armed with their iPads, the kids found examples of these processes and took pictures.We then used the app Pages to create a poster highlighting the changes they found.

Thank you, Jeremy, for this awesome example.

This was a quick, easy project that gave me a chance to assess my students' knowledge the content.  We used a pre-made template from Pages to make the posters. Overall, this project took about an hour to complete; 30 mins for exploring and taking pictures and 30 minutes to complete the posters. 

Tips for using in your classroom:

• They were not as many examples of the processes around the school as I had hope.  You may want to look around the day before, so you can point your students to the right spots.
• Pages did not spell check the words in all caps.  This is a good place to talk to your students about remembering to edit their documents and not rely on spell check.