The Teacher Who Hated Math: More Laptop Fun

I was really worried a few weeks ago about how I was going to integrate the laptops into my classroom. Don't get me wrong - I was excited as all get out - but still anxious. My school administration has been very good about not putting a ton of pressure on us to use them daily (or even weekly for that matter). The overall feeling has been, use them when you can and for lessons where it works - in other words, don't force it or stress over it. I was trying to figure out how I could use the laptops in ways that I already teach - and I was coming up with very few examples - it was stressful! Once they had the laptops though, I realized now I can do the lessons I wanted to do before, but couldn't because I didn't have the resources. For example, now I can have everyone complete an online activity at the same time instead of as a station. This is great because a lot of online activities require more time to complete than one station rotation.

Students working on their laptops - I had to rearrange my classroom for my pretty new SmartBoard (see it on the wall?!)

I already shared this website, but www.internet4classrooms.com is just awesome. The more and more I go through it, the more pleased I am. I found the website I used for my lesson a few weeks ago on percents with discounts, interest and tips on here.

I had students visit http://www.mathplayground.com/mathatthemall2.html. The website calls this a game, but I would describe it more as an activity. Anyways, the students select their character and visit different stores in a virtual mall where they solve all kinds of percent problems. They have to calculate tip at a cafe, interest at the bank, and discounts at the toy store and gym. Even better is the students get to make decisions that create the problems - they chose what to order at the cafe, how much money to deposit at the bank and what toys to buy at the toy store. The activity breaks the problems up into parts (and my only complaint is that they never really give them a chance to solve the problem from beginning to end without breaking it up for them), but I really liked it as an introduction to how to solve these types of percent problems. I followed up this activity with some additional practice that offered less guidance.