OCTOBER 2ND, 2020

MR. ABRAMS'S
CLASSROOM
CHRONICLES
A TECHNOLOGY UPDATE!

Note From the Teacher

Boston College
Dear Parents,
Elementary-
4th Grade! I'm excited to announce that the 4th grade will be
continuing our study of rational numbers and moving into a
unit on fractions this week! This being a more challenging
topic, I wanted to reach out and explain my plan for
scaffolding the class's learning here. For this unit, we're going
to begin to employ technology and electronics to add to
students' learning. Children are becoming more and more
comfortable with using technology, so it only makes sense to
try to blend that into the world of learning. To carry this out,
we'll be using the "Splash Math" website and the "Fraction"
iPad app to help build knowledge of fractions. Both of these
tools are great for pairing hands-on learning and instruction
with a virtual learning component. We'll be utilizing these
programs a good deal in the classroom, so it might help
students to be able to access them at home as well. I'd also
encourage parents to take a look at the programs in an effort
to further engage their children with the material.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to
reach out!

Best,
Jake Abrams
abramsjg@bc.edu
 Splash Math and the
Fraction App!
A Little Bit About What to Expect
The two programs operate in different ways, but both should
prove extremely helpful in solidifying a student's understanding
of fractions.
Splash Math (found at https://www.splashmath.com/) is a
great K-5 online tool to help students achieve goals in
Mathematics. In the 4th grade section of the website, one
can find 11 topics to work on: Place Value, Number Sense,
Algebra, Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication, Division,
Fractions, Decimals, Measurements, and Geometry. For this
unit, we'll be focusing on fractions, but the other sections
could be useful to check out! Within the fraction section, one
can find fun and intriguing exercises on halves, quarters,
wholes, mixed numbers, subtraction and addition of fractions,
and much, much more. The content found on the website is
accurate and the teaching methods are intuitive, plus the
website provides common core links to their lessons, making
it a sound and responsible resource to use. In addition, when
a student completes an exercise, they are given a reward on
the website, which instills confidence and positively
reinforces the work they're doing.

The Fraction App

(https://www.mathlearningcenter.org/resources/apps/fraction
s), on the other hand, doesn't deal with many other things
outside of fractions, so its use might be limited outside of this
unit. The app, available for iPad and Android and over the
web as well, focuses on allowing students the chance to play
around with fractions and their denominators. It contains
many features that give students freedom to discover
fractions on their own, in that it "lets students use a bar or
circle to represent, compare, and perform operations with
fractions with denominators from 1 to 100". It provides
opportunity to learn about performing addition, subtraction,
multiplication, and division with fractions, while also using
different display factors like color and shape to make learning
more appealing and engaging for students. This app might
be a bit more difficult for students to use on their own,
therefore it might be helpful if parents worked on it together
with their children. Of course, I'll explain the websites layout
in class and make sure students are confident using it,
because I do think a guided instruction with it would be
helpful, but using it out of class might prove to be a
challenge. With that being said, the math ideas and concepts
present are accurate and necessary for students to learn in
this unit. The app is a tool used in the Bridges in
Mathematics K-5 curriculum (which employs appropriate
Common Core Standards for each unit) to scaffold students'
learning, making the app a useful and sound program to
accompany our pursuit of an understanding of fractions.