AT team at OAME - blowing a lesson "out of proportion"

AT team teachers present at OAME

Valia Reinsalu and Etienne Mercieca, two members of the Itinerant Resource SEA Team, represented our department at the Ontario Association for Mathematics Education (OAME) conference held last week from May 8-10 at Humber College’s north campus in Toronto. Valia and Etienne presented “Blowing a Lesson Out of Proportion Using Your IWB in a Special Education Setting” and showed conference participants many of the ways they can support special education students’ different learning needs through the many tools available on an interactive whiteboard. 

The tools were modeled through the lens of financial literacy with examples of lessons and activities to support special education students as they learn about unit rates in order to help them make more informed consumer decisions the next time they are presented with a store offer to buy a larger quantity of a particular item over purchasing just one of the item. Conference participants were shown how the tools of the IWB could be used to differentiate lessons, scaffold concepts, and engage learners. For example, participants were shown how they might adapt a pre-existing lesson by substituting images students in their classrooms would more likely relate with.  They were also shown how to embed audio to support reading and writing and how to add video to provide additional scaffolding of concepts. Overall, conference participants walked away with many ideas to try with their students!

Adding audio and visuals to problems can support student independence when working at the IWB as a student activity centre.

Using built-in tools and features of the IWB such as containers, to solve problems.