Friday, April 24, 2015

Math vocabulary and other things.




Last night was one of those nights.  I was awake at 3 AM so I was

on the apps program to look for new apps to try.  I found this interesting app called Mathcabulary. It is a word search game that integrates mathematical words into the search.  Students get points for all the words they find in the grid but they get more points for the mathematical words they find. 
http://www.topapps.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Kendall-Hunt-Mathcabulary.jpg

Most grids have two to three mathematical words in them.  The program accepts both math words and conversational words but you get more points for finding the mathematical terms. 



In addition, when you are done, the list shows the mathematical terms at the top.  They are in green if you found them and red if you missed them.  When I saw this at first, I thought it only had math words but after playing it a couple times, I realized that it doesn't matter because many students need to improve their vocabulary after all.

So I decided I can use this in my classroom if I have students do the following:
1. At the end of each round, students can write down the mathematical words.  At the end of playing one or two rounds, the student can add the words to an ongoing list that they define, illustrate, have examples and non-examples so they are building a dictionary.  There is another app I down loaded last night that would be perfect for this particular activity.  I'll play with that one a bit more tonight and then report on it later.
2. They can create sentences that use the vocabulary words.
3.  They can show an example of where this mathematical word will be used in real life.

On to the other thing.  I've found a couple free apps that have some very nice ways of breaking down the material but are limited because they want you to purchase the full version.  I think I can take the idea of how they explain things and create my own explanations and problems in Nearpod so each student has a chance to practice this in a group practice session.  More on this idea later.

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