Improving Math Mastery through Technology

This year marks my 17th year as a general education elementary teacher. Throughout my career, I have taught students across various grade levels, primarily in second and third grades. I have taught combination classrooms as well as single-grade-level classrooms. I have always been passionate about teaching math and reading, especially math. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, I have observed that students are drawn to technology more than ever. I also have noticed that students continue to enjoy learning math when technology is involved. Over the past several years, I have asked myself this question, “Why not increase student learning towards mastery of grade-level skills using technology?”

I currently teach in the heart of downtown Billings, the largest city in Montana. We have a diverse population of students that range from high socioeconomic status to low socioeconomic status. Our school population includes students from all of the homeless shelters and hotels in Billings. As well, our school has a high population of Indigenous students. Over the course of my career, I have had the opportunity to teach in small, rural towns as well as in the largest school district in Montana.

As a general education teacher with a self-contained classroom, I have taught every ability level that a child may be at on their academic journey. With the hundreds of children that I have taught, one thing remains consistent: students love learning through technology. As test scores across the nation declined during the COVID-19 pandemic, as educators, we find ourselves needing to work harder than ever to increase student learning toward mastery of grade-level skills.

Here are some resources I have used over the years to help boost and improve my students’ math skill mastery and test scores. And let’s be honest…any time that we can make learning fun, more learning takes place. 

DreamBox Math

DreamBox Math is a supplemental program from Discovery Education. I first used Discovery Education Experience  a few years ago. It is an incredible resource to use to help supplement Reading, Math, Science, and Social Studies core curriculum programs. They are even currently developing resources for Indigenous Education as well in the state of Montana. I stumbled upon DreamBox Math at a Discovery Education Experience workshop I attended last summer. I fell in love with the idea of an engaging and adaptive learning platform to reach all of my students’ diverse levels of learning.

Now more than ever, as educators, we need tools that we can access that will reach all of our students’ different learning styles and levels. DreamBox Math definitely does this. Here is what a couple of my students said about DreamBox Math when I asked them what they enjoyed most: “It’s the games. I like to learn this way and it helps me understand math better. I like that I’m doing different things than in math class, like multiplication in class but time and graphs on DreamBox.” As a teacher I appreciate the adaptability of the program where all students receive support at their level on their academic journey. 

ST Math

I first learned about ST Math when I came to Billings Public Schools. ST Math is an online supplemental program that we use in the district at the elementary level. Our curriculum department aligned ST Math to our current curriculum. This allows students to visually work on math skills and manipulate math problems that correlate with what they are taught during the lesson. ST Math uses spatial- temporal reasoning to solve math problems. As a teacher, I love that I can create assignments that align exactly with what I am teaching in class.

ST Math can also be assigned to students at their independent learning levels creating more differentiation for our students. I really appreciate the problem solving strategies that ST Math instills in our students. Since Billings has implemented ST Math, we have seen a steady increase in district and statewide testing scores in math. Here is what my students have to say about ST Math, “ST is so much fun to do! It is a little bit hard but a really fun way to do math.”

Educational Quiz Game Platforms

Here are a few quiz type platforms that my students really enjoy that help engage and support their learning journey with friendly competition. 

• Boddle is an ELA and Math platform that has curriculum aligned content for students to use to enhance their understanding of math concepts. “Boddle is really fun because you get to battle someone and the winner gets to  upgrade their pets. The arcade is really fun too,” said a third grader. 

• Gimkit is a quiz game platform where educators can create kits that align with their current curriculum instruction. The kids can play a variety of games that include strategy, teamwork, and collaboration to do things like have a snowball fight, play tag, play capture the flag, and many more while answering curriculum aligned questions. There are hundreds of pre-made kits available as well. Here is what students say about Gimkit, “There are so many games. You can upgrade a lot of cool stuff while learning.”

• Blooket is similar to Gimkit in the sense that it is a quiz game platform where educators can create sets of questions for students to answer. The games are independent and can again be aligned to the curriculum. There are hundreds of pre-made sets as well to choose from. As a teacher I appreciate how effortless it is to create an assignment that enriches or builds key learning concepts. Students like Blooket because, “Blooket is the funnest way to learn.”

• Finally, Kahoot is another quiz based learning platform. It is so easy to create a quiz with key concepts from the curriculum. It gives another way for students to review information or build onto prior learning. Several third graders enjoy kahoot because, ““It’s fun to be on the leaderboard. It is a fun competition to help us learn.”

As you can see, there are so many great opportunities available for students to learn and practice math in a fun, educational way. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, students are used to technology being a big part of their educational journey. So let’s make math more fun and engaging to improve mastery of grade-level skills as well as improve test scores.

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