Assistive Technology

One of the greatest challenges of a teacher is providing supports for individual children, based on their varying needs. However, it can also be one of the greatest joys, as you see children grow and succeed in areas that used to be challenging. One area where students often need support (in first grade particularly) is fine motor, which can often lead to challenges in math. In first grade math, we use a variety of manipulatives and visuals, as concrete representatives for children. These manipulatives and visuals are a great way to increase student understanding, but can be a challenge for students with fine motor struggles.

The number grid is the visual that we use most often during math time. We use it to increase number sense, for place value, to solve number stories, skip counting (preparing for multiplication), and much more. Over the last 2 years I've had several children struggle to use the number grid. I've printed off larger versions, which helped a little. But, they still often skipped lines or numbers. I've had them use the classroom number grid, but it involves flipping small cards, which is another fine motor challenge. So, I went looking for an app that might help with this. The app I will be featuring below is simply called "Learning Numbers Grid."

The feature that makes this app so fantastic, is that when students tap the numbers, they change color. This lets students know exactly which numbers they've tapped. This is huge! The changing colors prevents students from skipping numbers, hitting numbers more than once, or skipping a line. It also allows me (as a teacher) to tell them which numbers to hop between, and they can use this color-changing feature to discover patterns in the number grid.  

Another helpful aspect of this app, is the fact that you can customize how many numbers you want shown. 1-100 can be intimated or overwhelming for some students, so being able to only show numbers 1-50 or even 1-30 is quite helpful. Another fun element, is the ability to change the color of the numbers once they're tapped. This doesn't really have any huge learning benefit, but it's a simple way to making math more engaging for students. So, I'll take it!

 The picture below shows how the app looks when a specified range is selected. Here is selected the numbers 1-50. I'm excited to try out this app this week!