Teaching with Technology

As 10th Graders, the ACT or SAT may seem like a far-off, yet nevertheless daunting, task, and as educators at my placement school, we are expected to help prepare students for such important standardized tests. As a math teacher, I would like to practice ACT/SAT type questions, but have trouble fitting this material into the normal content of the course. Luckily, we are currently covering properties of triangles, which are tested in the Geometry section of both math portions. After having begun an ACT/SAT Wednesday Do Now procedure, I noticed that students were very interested in practicing to improve their scores, and would like to incorporate the triangle questions into the regular course instruction.

After having students read through the thinking process behind answering various ACT/SAT questions, I plan on having a review activity, after students learn about how to answer triangle problems and how they can use the properties they have learned to their advantage on such tests. For this review, plan on having students play a game to energize and motivate students to attempt to answer these questions and practice their Geometry content for the ACT/SAT, as well as for our class!

Before this occurs, because it is a new placement classroom for me, I will need to survey the students to determine which students have access to a smartphone, computer, or tablet in the classroom, and which have internet access on their devices. I will group them taking into consideration who the students will work well with, as well as making sure that each group has access to at least one smart phone that can access a mobile web browser. These smartphones will be used to play a quiz show-like game called Kahoot.it (Click here to go to the teacher's site where you can create a quiz!).

In group of 4 or 5, students will be presented practice questions from the ACT or SAT that will look like:

Using Kahoot.it, I can upload an image or link a YouTube video to ask the question I would like to, and as you can see above, I uploaded an image to ask the question, rather than typing out the question. Students will then be able to choose one of the shapes/colors on their smartphones to answer the question, and Kahoot.it will tally up the points based on the number of questions correct in what amount of time. 

This will be perfect practice for taking a timed test such as the SAT or ACT, and because I already know the students are motivated to prepare for these tests, I think this will be fun and energizing for them as well.