Math Empowers 5
Middletown Township Public Schools
Fifth Grade • 1st Quarter • 2016-2017
Dreambox Tips and Tricks
Assign Focus Feature
DreamBox added a new feature this past summer; you can now create assignments for a specific learning standard. You can create up to two assignments at any time, each of which will be active for a period of seven days. For more information on how to utilize this feature, please see the link below and/or contact your math specialist.
Lesson Completion
It is important that students have approximately 15-20 minutes at a time to complete a DreamBox session. This time period should be sufficient for a student to complete a lesson. "Lessons must be completed once started in order for our Intelligent Adaptive Learning™ technology to accurately introduce next best lessons for your student. If your student closes or exits the browser without completing a lesson, DreamBox cannot collect their learning data. The student will then need to redo the lesson from the beginning."
Dreambox = Dinner!
Dreambox's revolutionary Intelligent Adaptive Learning™ technology, along with it's rigorous curriculum and an engaging game-like environment are mathematically incomparable. It individualizes instruction and provides various different learning paths, depending on each student's needs. Through work with DreamBox, students will build problem solving skills, master concepts, increase acheivement, and boost their mathematical confidence. The data collected by DreamBox during every lesson will help guide intervention. Websites like SumDog, ABCya, and MathPlayground are great practice and students enjoy working with them, but they are not individualized to the level of DreamBox. Maybe the next time a student asks to visit one of these sites, ask them to try DreamBox first and then visit one.
Three-Act Tasks
Three-act tasks were created by Dan Meyer, a former high school math teacher. Many teachers and bloggers have since created their own three-act lessons to share. In these tasks, students are shown an engaging video or image. The tasks suggest a mathematical idea or relationship that students tend to wonder about. Discussion about the video or image ensues, where students discuss what math questions could be asked and identify what information is needed to answer the questions. From there, students construct models of the situation and relate them to the real-world to solve.
A three-act task is a component of the ideal math lesson. You can find some three-act lessons aligned with Go Math! in the Go Math! Lesson Resources document here: https://docs.google.com/a/middletownk12.org/spreadsheets/d/1fJwyPAL2Z2VQ9y9wbuYcABkiaRSQxvFvjy9GELQWKHY/edit?usp=sharing For more information on three-act lessons, please visit the following link and/or see your math specialist. https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2016/05/13/modeling-with-math-nsf/
Promote Mathematical Discourse
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwybOzduLy_ocUhDMzlPS2d4NHhaQjFlLXAtM282cUhZbEdv
Thanks for reading! :)
Ashley Connors
Elementary Mathematics Specialist
Navesink Elementary School
Math Empowers - Fifth Grade Representative