Math & AT project: Using OneNote to support student communication of ideas - spotlight Scarborough Village A.S.

Students in Miriam Taylor's Home School Program at Scarborough Village Alternative School had a wide variety of opportunities to use technology to explore the concept of equivalent fractions during a recent co-teaching session. As part of the "I have Assistive Technology in the classroom, how do I use it for Math?" project. Ms Taylor and itinerant teacher Valia Reinsalu created a lesson which incorporated different software to support the students' learning styles and ability to communicate their understanding and thinking.

Minds On: Promethean Interactive Whiteboard flipchart

To start off the lesson, students revisited their understanding of identifying and naming fractions.

Ms Taylor during the Minds On portion of the lesson students used simple IWB tools to share their knowledge.

In one example students use the pen tool to complete the whole and name the fractional parts or divide a whole into fractional parts.

Action: OneNote
Scarborough Village is part of the AT team`s C.A.R.T. project this year (Curriculum and Resource Technology) so it`s a natural fit to get the laptops into the students` hands during the action portion of the lesson. Students picked up separate Microsoft OneNote page files from the school`s student shared folder and worked on the problems using OneNote tools as well as hands-on manipulatives.

Scarborough Village students represent fractions using various draw tools in OneNote.

Students in the triad use fraction circle manipulatives and computer to explore a problem about equivalent fractions (left). Without prompting one student quickly creates a vocabulary word list using Read and Write Gold to confirm his understanding of the word equivalent (right).

Consolidation: IWB and OneNote

As part of explaining their thinking, groups could choose to use the record video portion to orally explain and show why the two fractions represented were equivalent. Once all groups are finished Ms. Taylor will show each group's solution and play their embedded video from OneNote on the IWB. Students will have a chance to reflect and discuss answers for clarity and accuracy.

A OneNote solutions page. This group of students have responded to why the two fractions are equivalent by including an embedded video where they orally explain their answer.