Making Asynchronous Math Practice Meaningful

I've been thinking a lot about how to give my students choice in meaningful practice opportunities while we are learning from home. While there are some really awesome online tools, I want to limit the need to use technology for all the things.

Why math packs? 

a) We are fully remote for the first quarter of this year. I want our synchronous online time to be engaging and hope that my students do not feel the same level of screen fatigue that I have been experiencing since spring;

b) Many of the tech apps are isolated practice, and do not offer great feedback, so I would prefer that students do some open-ended tasks and games that will allow them to be flexible in their thinking and get feedback from family members who may play with them, and peers when we debrief together;

c) Our school has purchased a subscription to Dreambox (huzzah!), and I feel that platform offers what I'm looking for in independent practice, so adding in many other apps is neither necessary nor effective for what I hope to accomplish through independent practice.

What's in the packs?

• Needed tools for the games: mini dice, paper clips, dry erase marker, and pompom eraser
  
  
• Some extra tools that will be helpful in class: pencil, sharpener, glue stick
  
  
• Dry erase pocket with 4 games from Donna Boucher and Laney Sammons' book Guided Math Workstations, YouCubed's How Close to 100?, and base ten blocks to cut out as well as multiplication fill-in puzzles from this set of blackline masters.
  
  
• Multiplication Math Flips from Berkeley Everett. 

How will students use the packs?

Students are expected to spend 45 minutes daily on asynchronous math learning (this is per our district). They will spend some of that time on Dreambox and the for rest they will have choice from their math packs. I am considering whether to do it by day or by minutes (i.e. MWF on Dreambox, TuTh on math packs). They will log their activity on a Google Doc each week so that I can monitor progress and offer feedback. 

This is new to us all, and as I stated at the start of the post, it is my hope that incorporating some choice in offline activities to offset the time we are spending online. I'll let you know how it goes in a later post once school starts and we get some practice in! Please comment your thoughts and ideas!

Pausing to Process: Distance Learning Information Overload

I have lost count of the number of hours I have spent since mid-March in trainings, webinars, online courses, and meetings. I know I have nearly 60 new hours of PD credit, and probably a similar amount that did not count for credit. So, yeah, I'm a little overloaded with information. I feel the need to pause and process and integrate what I've learned with my experiences from March-June teaching from a distance.

While there are so many amazing apps that do so many things, I cannot do all the things. It is time to reflect on what is manageable for my students and me, and to think about what to use to accomplish our goals.

I'm not all the way there yet, but here are some initial thoughts:

1. Google Edu Suite is the district-approved LMS, and we have a pretty strict AUP (acceptable use policy) that limits what we can use outside of that. So, for as many things as I possibly can, I will be using Google Tools. My favorites this year were Jamboard and Drawings, will build on those with more.
   
   
2. I want to limit the amount of unique logins students need to remember. Sites that integrate seamlessly with Google Classroom are huge favorites, and that allow a "Sign in with Google" option.
   
   
3. I'm coming off of our annual layoff (that's right, folks, Teachers. Do. NOT. Get. Paid. Over. Summer.) and I believe that employers have a responsibility to provide the necessary tools for their employees to do their jobs, so forever free is hugely important. I will pay for something that legitimately does something very differently or much more efficiently than what I can do with Google tools, but it's gotta be as amazing as Classkick Pro. :)
   
   
4. Assessment tools have been a challenge. My district has a new assessment management system that I am actually super psyched about, and plan to use that for most of my formative and summative assessments. Google forms will also be used for some checks, and I'm exploring EdPuzzle. Menti is awesome for quick, anonymous polls. Gotta keep it fresh.
   
   
5. Flipgrid is a staple I do not know that I couldn't live without for asynchronous math talks, so that will be a big one, too. I have visions of books talks and more with that, too. Peer feedback can happen well there, too, and it will give us a space separate from Meet to see each other's faces.

Good thing this is day 1 of #MTBoSBlaugust because I have a lot of fleshing out to do. However, I will say that limiting the number of tools is helping me streamline my thinking. More to come!