Technology Integration Observation

JoAnn Leleck Elementary School at Broad Acres

Observer: Rebecca G. Smoot

Staff Cinzia Bruno, 2nd Grade Subject Math: Whole group and 2
Name Teacher Taught differentiated small groups

Date Friday, April 13th, 2018 Time After recess from 1:45 to 2:45pm

During the pre-observation meeting, Ms. Bruno let me know she was
following a responsive classroom atmosphere by allowing students to have
flexible seating. There were various options of where students could sit.
Classroom
These options included low tables with low soft stools, tables at regular
Configuration
student height with higher stools, rocking chairs with clip boards, and sitting
on the carpet with “dinner tray” looking tables for students to have the
necessary resources such as a hard surface and pencils.
During the pre-observation meeting, Ms. Bruno stated she had a total of 19
Student
students. 10 boys and 9 girls. 3 students are Ethiopian. 16 students are
Demographics
Hispanic.

1:45pm: Students entered the classroom from recess in a line. Several students ask to
get water. Ms. Bruno states they will get a chance soon, after their Math Message. Ms.
Bruno announces two student names for coming in the classroom and listening to
directions. She then selects these two students and rewards them for “Being
Respectful”. The board dings as these points are earned.

1:47pm: All students are sitting on the carpet in front of the promethean board. Once
Description of Lesson

again several students ask to get water. Ms. Bruno reminds them they should try to
start bringing water bottles to recess as the weather begins to change. She promises
students will have a chance to take turns after their Math Message.

1:50pm Ms. Bruno uses a FlipChart on ActivInspire to quickly review vocabulary

taught throughout the week and state today’s goals of learning how to draw an array
and write an equation using repeated addition. Each vocabulary word is on the screen.
[Font size large enough for all students to see] Once the word is clicked, an image and
definition accompany the vocabulary. After all the five words (Array, Repeated
Addition, Row, Column, and Rectangular Array) are clicked, students are then asked
to “Turn and Talk” to discuss one of the words. Ms. Bruno gives students directions
on how to complete their Math Message (warm up) displayed on the board and then
sets 5 minutes on the ClassDojo timer.
 1:55pm: Students are sitting at various places in the classroom completing their Math
Message on arrays and repeated addition. Student raises hand and asks teacher if they
completed it correctly. Ms. Bruno replies by saying “it looks like you’re working hard,
we can check it once everyone is done”. Several students turn in their Math Message
and take turns getting water.

2:00pm: Most students are back on carpet. Some are still getting water. Ms. Bruno
plays skip counting song displayed on the promethean board. She alerts students to
“Remain Ready” by the time the song is over. Students scurry in from the hallway
from getting water and from their tables. Once the song is over she has ClassDojo
displayed and uses the randomize feature to check if students are “Remaining Ready”
(part of school motto). If students are sitting on the carpet quietly, they earn a point.
One student’s name is displayed, she says their name and thanks them for showing
“Remaining Ready” behavior. When the point is awarded, it shows up with student’s
avatar and name and a ding sound.

2:06pm: Students participate in completing the Math Message on the promethean

board using overlay tool. Ms. Bruno pulls up PDF of the Math Message then clicks on
the overlay tool on ActivInspire. Students are then randomly selected using “Random”
tool on ClassDojo. They come up to share their strategy for drawing a rectangular
array using columns and rows. Another student is selected at random to represent the
Description of Lesson

array with a repeated addition equation.

2:12pm: Ms. Bruno asks the students if they’d like to learn a new online math game.
Some shouted yes, some raised their hands. Students were definitely motivated. One
student shouted out and asked if they could play right then. She said she would need to
explain how to play and access the game first. She shows students the stream of their
“Math Google Classroom”. She then shows them the most recent link at the top is the
new math game for arrays. She slowly modeled using the promethean board and
promethean pen how to click on the link to access the game as they will be doing this
independently. She let students know that the game would automatically open a new
tab. She let students know that the name of this game was “Candy Shop Arrays”.
Several students got excited and asked if they’d be getting candy. She reminded
students that she was giving directions for a new online game. After clicking the link,
the game page opened. At first it had an error about Adobe Flash not being installed.
One of the boys in her class said “AGAIN?!?!”. She simply clicked the link to
“download” then pressed accept. Immediately the game worked. She let students know
that Chrome resets often to ensure we are playing learning games only. She let them
know this was a learning game. Then she modeled how the game verbally asked to
“Select a candy box with four rows” and how she would find it by thinking aloud
“Which candy box has four rows?” “Well, I know rows go from side to side, so I need
to find one that has four from top to bottom, that will show me four rows”. After
finding the candy box with four rows she clicked on it.

2:20pm: She allowed several students to come to the board and select various candy
boxes based on what the computer asked. She asked them to explain how they knew.
 The game repeated itself while one student was explaining. This gave her the chance
to show students how to access the pause button. The student was able to explain to
the class how she knew which one had the three by three array because each row and
each column would have three.

2:25pm: Ms. Bruno called math groups to begin. She called one math group to her
small guided table. She let the other two math groups had to complete their Math
Boxes Packet and then they were allowed to play the new online math game “Candy
Shop Arrays”.

2:27pm: Ms. Bruno stated about eight or nine students’ names and said “Thank you
for being responsible and quickly getting to my table or going to do your Math Boxes”
and awarded these students dojo points. Several of the students that were lollygagging
realized they were off task and not getting started.

2:28pm: Ms. Bruno let students at her table know they were getting candy. She told
them “Today we will use M&Ms to create an array and a repeated addition equation,
that we can eat”. They were very excited as she poured the pile of M&Ms onto the
towel. She asked them “What should we do first? How can we make an array” One
Description of Lesson

student replied, we need to put them into rows and another said we could put them in
columns. The students worked in pairs attempting to do this. As students were doing
this at the teacher table, others were working on their Math Boxes using manipulatives
or drawings on paper. At her table, students were realizing creating the array was like
a puzzle. Ms. Bruno stated “remember each column or row should have the same
number” guiding some of the students who said they were done. Students were then
able to explain their method of dividing the M&Ms equally into groups.

2:35pm: The other two groups were mostly completed with their Math Boxes and
several were on the computers playing the “Candy Shop Arrays” game. Students each
had their own headphones. This made the game very quiet but many of the students
were engaged in the game. One student had trouble accessing game and interrupted
her directions at her table. She quickly asked another student who had already
bypassed the “Adobe Flash player Download” issue and asked her to be a “coach” for
that student.

2:37pm: Students at her table were able to arrange an array into equal groups (columns
and rows). They then wrote down their repeated addition equation on white boards.
Afterwards they ate each row at a time with Ms. Bruno’s direction “Student 1, you can
eat the first row, Student 2, eat the second.”

2:42pm: Rang bell for students to stop what they were doing. Students put their hands
in the air. She then asked for Math Group 2 to come to the table and Math Group 1 to
complete their Math Boxes then play “Candy Shop Arrays”. The other math group
was instructed to continue their work or game.
 Analysis

Teacher asked open ended questions, such as for the method of taking a
group of objects and arranging them into equal sets. Using online game,
students were able to use discourse to explain how they knew which candy
Teacher
box represented the desired array. The pile of M&Ms allowed students to be
Questions
engaged in a hands on activity in created a rectangular array. This activity
was complex for many students but they were able to work through the
challenge with coaching and additive questions from Ms. Bruno.
Students were able to use acquired vocabulary to explain their thinking
behind a rectangular array created. Students also could represent this thinking
Student
in a repeated equation. Students were also able to share their strategy at Ms.
Responses
Bruno’s table by explaining the method of dividing the M&Ms into equal
groups.
Ms. Bruno used the promethean board to ensure a high quality lesson. The
promethean boar was mostly utilized to showcase vocabulary need to
understand objective and model how to play the new online math game. The
theme of the online game engaged students in playing. She also utilized
Use of
Chrome and online Adobe Flash Player game to reinforce the main
Technology
curriculum indicator and objective. By modeling how to access this game,
each student successfully used the school Chromebook assigned to them to
get into their Google Classroom. They also used headphones as well (that
they bought at the beginning of the school year).

Post Observation Discussion

Ms. Bruno let me know she was impressed how well her students were
getting a hang of the new vocabulary words being used in the turn and talk
routine. She was also happy to see many students engaged in the online array
Teacher
game. Next time she would like to remember to create an objective for the
Reflection
game announced, create a better follow up recording sheet for the digital
game, and hopefully find a game that has text or better hints other than just
repeating the question over.

My suggestion to Ms. Bruno to further integrate technology would be to

allow the students to make their own candy shop. They could create
questions based on their candy shop. This activity could be done on Google
slides then shared to their Math Google Classroom with the rest of the class.
Suggestions
When students are able to create their own arrays with accompanying
questions as the solution, they’ll really be able to understand the components
of a rectangular array and their matching repeated addition equations. She
said she would like to try that the following week.
 Observer Reflection

Fortunately in Second Grade classrooms there are Chromebooks made game

Technology accessible for all students. To possibly maybe make this online use more
Enhancements collaborative, it would be more idea to have students in pairs for peer
discourse. They could partner up using headphone splitters.
Yes, Ms. Bruno is a teacher that I could use as a future resource. She was
proficient in finding games that were aligned to curriculum content.
Additionally, she used creative ways that students show understanding
Professional through motiving and engaging activities. It was also interesting to see how
Development she incorporated responsive classroom techniques such as seating based on
making responsible choices. This lesson also allowed me to see how I could
guide teachers further in using technology for learning but also as a way for
students to be inspired to create and share their learning too.

• Knowing the Learner

o Motivation for students to have a Chromebook math center that was
engaging for practicing content taught and matched weekly indicators
o Students were able to share out their thinking and strategy to the whole
class, students are great leaders and teachers for others to learn
▪ Cooperative learning strategy used was “Turn and Talk” for
sharing the meaning of higher order vocabulary
Elementary Technology Teacher Look Fors

▪ Learning new online game

▪ Small diffentiated math groups working through
collaboratively in pairs to create a rectangular array
o Not a specific Web Quest but Google Classroom stream was used to
access new online game
o Students were engaged in small differentiated group and for the online
game, students also worked collaboratively to complete their Math
Boxes packet using manipulatives
o Students could choose which array they wanted to draw at the end of
the day on paper
o Ms. Bruno instilled a peer assistant to help others with technological
mishaps such as a “Student Coach” to assist in downloading adobe
flash and clicking the “allow” button so that the online game could run
• Knowing the Pedagogy
o Discourse in explaining, enriched group was able to discuss why
repeated addition is called multiplication because of the multiple
groups
o Math routine displayed on poster paper behind teacher desk
o Projection device used was a promethean board using ActivInspire
software and Chrome
o Each student has access to their own Chromebook
 o Technology integrated as a tool to teach game and tool for playing the
Elementary Technology Teacher Look game
o The enrichment group the task using the M&Ms seemed easy, then
they were able to advance to showing multiplication equation
o Communication skills included turn and talk, acquire new vocabulary
and understand rectangular arrays and how to transfer to a
mathematical equation
o She found the website herself through Google search after selecting a
Fors

couple of others more geared toward older grades found one that
explained the components of a rectangular array
o Students could easily login to their chrome and access Google
Classroom using their keyboard and mouse pad
o Responsible online use modeled using safety with Google Classroom
staying on this game only (or if complete with follow up then other
math games discussed in past)
o