Math & A.T. project Spotlight – Donview Middle Health and Wellness Academy - using Excel to deepen understanding of data management

Our “I Have Assistive Technology in my Classroom…How Do I Use It In Math?” project continues this month with additional Special Education teachers co-planning and co-teaching lessons with an Itinerant Resource Teacher. The purpose of this project is to help Special Education teachers develop a three-part math lesson with the use of assistive technology being embedded within the second part (“Working On It”) portion of the lesson so that students are able to use the technology to help express their mathematical reasoning.

Leonora Rochwerger, Intermediate HSP teacher from Donview Middle Health and Wellness Academy, worked with our team and developed a Data Management lesson that focused on interpreting and creating circle graphs. Leonora’s lesson embedded many assistive technology tools in order to engage her students and in order to help deepen their understanding of this concept. For example, students responded to prompts asking what they already knew about circle graphs by using the classroom Promethean Interactive White Board and ActivExpressions to text in their responses. Students then interpreted various circle graphs once again using their ActivExpression devices and engaged in a discussion on how to interpret the information presented.

Next, students learned how to use the math tools and shape tools in ActivInspire to create their own circle graphs based on data they had previously collected.

 As a follow-up to the lesson, students used Microsoft Excel to create circle graphs and and compared them with the graphs they had created using pencil, paper, and protractors.  Students also used Read and Write Gold 11 to create a vocabulary list for all the terminology related to this particular task.

Overall, students demonstrated a high level of engagement throughout the lesson and showed appreciation for how the use of these technological tools were able to assist them to more accurately represent the data that they had collected.

Project launch: I have Assistive Technology in My Classroom...How Do I Use It In Math?

The SEA Team is very excited to announce the commencement of our “I Have Assistive Technology In My Classroom…How Do I Use It In Math?!” project for this year.

The goal of this project is to share strategies and features of the various software tools available to support special education students through a mathematics lens and to create networking opportunities among special education teachers.

Three sessions will be held throughout the term of the project along with an observation classroom opportunity. The first session, taking place on Friday January 16^th, will provide an opportunity to meet the other learning community members and to examine the resources available in your classroom. In our second session, we will take a more in-depth look at some of the software applications. Teachers will also have an opportunity to share some experiences at that point. Our third session will be a sharing and celebration opportunity for learning community members. In between the sessions there will be co-planning and co-teaching opportunities (along with the opportunity to observe one another) in order to provide job-embedded professional learning.

We will support the use of various assistive technology software such as Microsoft Excel and OneNote, Read and Write Gold, ActivInspire, and SMART Notebook. New this year, we will also use Geometer Sketchpad.

At the end of the project, Learning Community members will be provided with a memory stick containing copies of all the lessons that were developed.