Reflex Math

For part of math today Mr. Sosa had his third grade students work on their math facts using Reflex Math. Reflex math was a program Mr. Sosa wrote a grant for at the beginning of the year and was awarded. It focuses solely on math fact fluency. Students design an avatar and earn points for avatar swag by playing fun and interactive games that use only their basic facts. As they master facts to fluency those facts will come up in the games less frequently allowing the facts that the student struggles with to be practice more often. The game has a carnival like atmosphere, which Mr. Sosa finds the kids really enjoy. There are also coaches embedded through out the game to help teach strategies and mini-lessons to allow student success in fact mastery. 

Math Word of the Week through Email

Here is an example of this week's Math Word of the Week Email by Ms. Ray and the problem Mrs. Barnard presented to the students.  The students will reply to both teachers during their independent time.

Math Word-of-the-Week

		x
Kristin Ray		5:56 PM (3 hours ago)

Hi Students- 

Thank you so much for participating in the online version of the weekly math 

vocabulary scavenger hunt! The winners will be announced on the K-OWL

news on Friday! Make sure to listen for your name!

This week's word is PERPENDICULAR LINES. You can find the definition 

on the Caraway website AND I found it on iXL too! I hope to hear from even 

more of you this week!

Thanks Mathematicians!

Bunny Barnard

Caraway Students, 

I had such a good response from my first math question.  That gave me

 the incentive to add another question for this vocabulary word.

Just for your information, I made my drawing in Google Drive with Drawing.

Google Mail is our Educational Answer!

Since the beginning of the year, Ms. Ray, our interventionist, developed a weekly scavenger hunt of math vocabulary words and definitions.  Ms. Kolodzinski, our TAG teacher, has her students create Screen-O-Matic.com videos of examples of the definition in action.  Ms. Letendre, our librarian, has students introduce it on broadcast each morning.  Ms. Barnard, our ITS, adds the word, definition, examples, and video weekly on the front page of our school website.  All this participation by the teachers was getting less and less participation by our students until our students received their Google Email!
Ms. Ray thought what would happen if we emailed the math vocabulary word to the students and let them watch all the places for the definition and send her back the definition to be entered into a drawing.  The first vocabulary word we tried was Prime Numbers.  Ms. Barnard added to the conversation thread by proposing a problem using the vocabulary word.  Her problem was, "Is 51 a prime number?" All this got great response by the students!  Not only can they email their classroom teacher, but now they were emailing the ITS and the Interventionist. They were giving definitions and answering the math problem and one student even used the Sieve of Eratosthenes to explain the answer. When the students weren't quite right, Ms. Barnard was able to give them hints.
The students love their independence with email and are "owning" their learning.  Ms. Ray writes, "I received SO many responses yesterday from students! Much more than the rest of the year combined. It has been really fun. When they have submitted a definition, I have asked for examples, and the students have again quickly responded. Awesome! It makes me really excited!"
Our principal, Ms. Hohmann, writes, "That's awesome!  I'm loving this student g-mail system, too."  She said, " I was able to praise students for their hard work." 
Ms. Letendre includes, "I saw reporters/ anchors who weren't on the air during our broadcast checking their email and responding in the newsroom.  Kudos for using brand new technology to get everyone learning math vocabulary!"

Free State Programs

Calling all 3rd-5th Students and Parents-

By now your child has come home with login cards for two educational computer programs that can be accessed at home! Both IStation (for reading) and Think through Math are excellent resources and tools that teach students in a fun and interactive way. And the best part is- it's FREE! Children love working on the computer and what a wonderful way to integrate technology and reading and math into one. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact your child's classroom teacher,

 Ms. Ray: Kristin_Ray@roundrockisd.org

 or Ms. Barnard: Bunny_ Barnard@roundrockisd.org

 Go for it... reading and math lessons are just one click away!

TAG Students are Reviewing Algebra Vocabulary

Mrs. Kolodzinski, our fourth grade TAG teacher at Caraway, has the students reviewing Algebra Vocabulary by using the Smartboard Notebook software.  To show us a quick quiz she has made for the students, she used the Screencast-o-matic videotape program to show the interactiveness of the program.