Skip Counting in Grade 1 using the Explain Everything App

In Grade 1 right now we are practicing skip counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s.

Yesterday, I gave my Grade 1’s the problem: How many shoes are we wearing all together as a class?

First, they discussed strategies with an elbow buddy. Some wanted to count by 2s in pairs but some wanted to count by 5s (like Tally’s) or 10s (like ten frames). They all agreed they wanted to take their shoes off though!

So we took off our shoes, sorted, and counted! As we counted we created an Explain Everything video to share our learning (The ending video is from the next day as it did not work probably so we had to re-record it!). You can view the video on our blog here:

http://edublog.amdsb.ca/bross/2013/11/26/skip-counting-our-shoes-3/

I used this to model not only how to solve a problem using skip counting but also to model how to use the explain everything app. They also had fun creating the video!

Today I gave two students the problem: You have 4 bins of cars. There are 10 cars in each bin. How many cars do you have all together? I told them they could you use anything they wanted to solve the problem but must show their thinking using explain everything.

After about 30 minutes, they had these two videos posted to their blogs. Not too bad for a first try!

http://edublog.amdsb.ca/tblb/2013/11/26/19/
http://edublog.amdsb.ca/ldlb/2013/11/26/40-cars/

I am going to have more students solve the same or similar problem and share using explain everything this week. Just thought I would share our first try at it!