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Math Applet Review #1

 https://www.nctm.org/Classroom-Resources/Illuminations/Interactives/Grouping-and-Grazing/ 

For my first Math Applet Review, I chose the Illuminations (NCTM) website and quickly realized there are way too many activities to review in one blog post so I will be specifically focusing on the game called Grouping and Grazing. This game is designed for PreK through 2nd grade and works best on tablets and laptops. The student’s objective of the game is to help the alien spaceship move cows into corrals by counting, adding, or subtracting. This activity helps children learn grouping, tally marks, and place value. As they master counting, they can move on to adding and subtracting two-digit numbers. One thing I really like about this game is it can be used for students who are working on counting by 5s and 10s and then can be differentiated for students working on addition, then subtraction with a simple click of a drop-down menu. I want to teach special education and I will have a wide variety of math levels in my classroom so the ability to differentiate levels of this game is great. In the easiest setting of the game, students are asked to “group cows by 5 and drag the remainder over the ditch, then press check”. Students will then click on any 5 cows and then click the “group” button and a spaceship will come take the cows away to their own pasture. The first time I played the game, I was given 16 cows, so I made 3 groups of 5 and then dragged the last cow across the ditch and pressed check. A notification popped up asking me to count the total amount of cows and asked if I wanted to count alone or together. I clicked count alone and then was asked to type in the total amount of cows. The addition level was similar and I was given lots of cows and an addition problem and I had to drag the right number of cows over the ditch to find the sum and then had to type in the answer to the problem. For subtraction, you click on the number of cows you are taking away (subtracting) and then click the subtraction button and then drag the remaining cows into the pasture across the ditch. I enjoyed this game for students learning counting by 5s, 10s, and addition, but the subtraction feature was a little confusing for me. This could be because the way I learned subtraction was different than the way this game is teaching students so it may work for some but may just be too confusing for other students. As I mentioned previously, one benefit of this game is the ability to differentiate for students at different levels. Another benefit is the game is very easy to learn and students could even play together on a smart board or individually on laptops or tablets. The only challenge I found was the subtraction game was difficult to understand and took more steps to get the correct answer than the other game “levels”.






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