Looking for ways to keep your students engaged in learning during online courses? It’s no secret that online classes can become mundane and boring, and lack the benefit of hands-on experimentation and practice. The greatest benefit of technology is that it empowers students to learn at their own pace and simulate the environment of class-room learning. If you are looking to spice up your next online class, use these excellent resources.
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Geography
The world’s greatest super thief has struck again, gallivanting across the world to steal priceless, historical artifacts. Embark on a global mission to find one of the most notorious super sleuths and turn your students into super-explorers. Help your students capture Carmen Sandiago with the help of Google Earth and HMH Field Trips powered by Google Expeditions. You’ll need a compatible VR viewer device for the student or “explorer,” a device for the teacher or “guide,” and a Wi-Fi network that is peer-to-peer enabled. This game is perfect for spicing up your geography lessons and making sure kids learn a thing or two about different countries, landmarks, and geography.
Vocabulary
Building vocabulary is necessary for fluidity in writing and reading. If you are trying to enhance your student’s vocabulary, why not indulge them in online vocabulary games to ensure your students continue to learn and retain new words. Enhancing vocabulary is all about getting students frequent, and sustained exposure to words that expand their horizons, which can be perfectly achieved with a plethora of online games featuring clever gameplay, adaptive instruction, and customizable flashcards.
“Endless Wordplay: School Edition” is a wonderful app for helping kids construct and deconstruct words. Flocabulary is another great app for teaching vocabulary across content areas. Lessons contain music videos that introduce the vocabulary kids need for a lesson in student loans, simple machines, geometry, and even a Shakespearean sonnet. Teachers can play these videos for the entire class to view. VocabularySpellingCity is another great subscription based app that offers access to all word lists, learning activities, and student records from the VocabularySpellingCity website.
Science
From learning the characteristics of plants and animals, to learning about the human body, to everything related to Earth and space, science is all about inspiring curiosity and discovering the world. If you want to broaden your students’ understanding of the various fields of science, it helps to use fun games and apps in your online classes to inculcate the skills of a scientist in your students. Not to mention, online classes leave little room for hand-on experimentation, which is where these apps come into play.
“Plants by Tiny Bop” is an interactive diorama that lets kids explore different biomes and their plant and animal life. This open-ended learning tool helps kids explore plants and animals in their natural habitats. “Toca lab” is another useful resource that familiarizes students with the periodic table of elements in an engaging way and lets them experiment in a virtual chemistry lab with a full array of lab equipment, such as test tubes, a Bunsen burner, a centrifuge, and an oscilloscope. “The Human Body by Tinybop” is another great resource if you want to teach students about the human body with clear structures that highlight bones, lymph nodes, the heart, and the intestines. This app is perfect for demonstrating how the stomach digests food, how the heart beats, how the eyes synthesize visual information. “Britannica Kids: Solar System” is another great resource for teaching students about different planets, sun, moon, asteroids, and comets, as well as reinforce learning through quizzes and puzzles.
Math
A lot of kids struggle with basic mathematical concepts and online classes makes the entire learning process all the more complex. Fortunately, there are fun and engaging online resources that really help build skills and promote a love of STEM in kids. Be it simple concepts such as number sense, counting, basic addition, and shapes or more advanced Math such as trigonometry, calculus, and geometry, apps make it easier to simplify complex concepts.
“Todo” Math is a great app that is designed to help kids of all abilities practice math, covering the full range of skills from counting to multiplication. This app is great for class-room room and even for supplementing Math practice at home. “Arcademics” is another great resource that helps first through sixth graders practice math concepts through fun and engaging games. “Prodigy” is another fantasy based math app that help kids learn skills from grades one through eight. Kids answer math questions to earn spells, which help them battle monsters and move through the game. “Hand-on equations” is an algebra education app for kids that is used by teachers all over. The app offers a kid-friendly way to learn and practice algebra concepts. “Algebraic Reasoning Sweet Shop” is another great app that helps students grasp concepts related to price and purchasing by buying and selling sweets.
FAQs
How do online apps benefit classroom learning?
The introduction of educational and learning apps in classroom learning has led to the introduction of new learning methods. Fun and engaging games and apps are better able to indulge the students into a healthy thought process and help them understand things from a different perspective. Teachers used to find it a difficult nut to crack to keep their students entertained, but educational apps and games promote interest in topics that students might otherwise disregard.
What’s great about Minecraft is that it enables students to think visually about mathematical models and theories”. The game’s block-based mechanics and 3D sandbox environment offers the perfect opportunity to students to learn mathematical principles and test their ideas. Seemingly intangible concepts such as fractions, multiplication, division, patterns, and areas all make sense when they are laid out spatially and can be manipulated with a mouse. Since Minecraft is already loved by students, it keeps them engaged and ignites their passion for learning.
Minecraft: Education Edition is an open-world game that encourages problem-solving, collaboration, creativity, and engagement in an immersive environment where sky is the limit when it comes to your imagination. Teachers from around the world have turned to Minecraft in their classroom to connect learning to tangible outcomes, encourage creative exploration, and boost engagement. If you too want to bring your math curriculum alive and teach multiplication facts to your students, here are some lessons to engage your students’ problem solving, and communication skills.
Multiplication Activities For Grade 3 By Minecraft
If you are wondering how to teach multiplication to struggling students, here are a list of activities that leverage Mine craft’s capabilities to complement and enhance classroom teaching for 3rd graders:
Multiply one-digit whole numbers by multiples of 10
Help your 3rd graders understand how to multiply one-digit whole numbers by multiples of 10 with the help of properties of operations. In the Minecraft Activity “Survival City Making Roads”, students are required to build a 1 kilometer long using a series of 1m blocks. The students are required to create a prototype of a road with a length of ten blocks before building a larger version by a multiple of ten. Students then decide on the best materials to use for the construction of the road and determine the amount of materials to be used in the road after every 10 meters. Once the students determine how much of each material is needed for the prototype, they can simply multiply the amount of each item by the multiple of ten to uncover the total amount of each item needed to build the required length of the road. The students work in group to gather the required material and build the full road.
Commutative And Associative Properties of Multiplication
If you want to teach your students that 4 × 5=5 × 4, or that 3 × 4 × 2 can be founded by 3 × 4=12 so that 12 × 2=24, “Commutative property bed wars” is one of the best activity. To set up this game, students enter the Minecraft World in Creative mode and are required to build six models that depict the commutative property of multiplication. For instance, if the first array is 2 x 6 = 12, then the next array should be 6 x 2 = 12. On the game board, these models can be used to defend your own bed or even to build a bridge to your opponent’s bed. By the end of this activity, students should be able to understand that Multiplication problems are the same backwards and forwards.
Interpret Multiplication as Repeated Addition
This activity is meant to give students an idea that multiplication is simply repeated addition. In this activity, students will be given the Minecraft math model, and they will be required to describe the picture simultaneously as an addition sentence and as a multiplication sentence. For instance, 2×3=6 could be rewritten as 2 packets of tissues with 3 tissues in each. The idea is to show students a series of pictures and move them through the concepts of grouping, repeated addition, finally towards multiplication.
Multiplication Activities For Grade 4 By Minecraft
Here are a list of activities that leverage Mine craft’s capabilities to complement and enhance classroom teaching for 4th graders:
Multiplication to Solve Word Problems
Through this lesson, teachers will be able to use visuals in Minecraft to prove how the multi digit multiplication works. Students will enter a single player world in survival mode and given four real-world problems that they will have to solve. These exercise are best for bridging the conceptual and procedural knowledge of multiplication for 4th graders. By the end of this activity, students should be able to translate between numbers and math models.
Finding the unknown variable
This exercise will help students discover the unknown whole number in a multiplication equation relating three whole numbers. For instance, students need to find the variable that makes 8 ×? = 48 true. Students will be given a series of equations with missing numbers and receive the blocks necessary to complete each equation. Students need to find the missing number by building a mine craft math model. The key idea is to help students determine an unknown number in an equation by teaching them to come up with its inverse equation.
Multi-digit Multiplication
Teach your students how to multiply a whole number of up to four digits by a one-digit whole number, as well as how to multiply two two-digit numbers, with the help of area models and rectangular arrays. The goal is to help students understand how area models can help them multiply large numbers. Students load the world focused around Multiplying Multi-Digit Numbers and are presented with problems which can only be solved by reading the area model as well as problems for which students need to build an area model. This activity should also help students understand how base 10 can help them in solving multiplication problems.
Multiplication Activities For Grade 5 By Minecraft
Here are a list of activities that leverage Mine craft’s capabilities to complement and enhance classroom teaching for 5th graders:
Use of braces, brackets and parentheses in Multiplication
Teach your kids how to use braces, brackets and parentheses numerical expressions and evaluate expressions with these symbols, with the help of the Minecraft lesson “City Planning – Survival Roads 1”. In this activity, students will team up to build a 0.2 kilometer long road by writing equations to determine how many blocks are needed to build it. It will take 2 whole blocks and 3 slabs to construct 1m of the road. 1 whole block can be crafted into 2 slabs, while each block equals 2 times meters and slabs are the product of 3 times meters divided by 2. By the end of this activity, students should be able to determine how many blocks will be needed to build the road, and then divide into groups to collect the required materials. Each group will have a lumberjack who will collect dirt, flowers dye, and wood, two miners who will collect gravel, ores, and stones, and a concrete worker who will collect gravel, sand, flowers, and dirt. All teams shall then return to their village and build the road.
Fractions and Multiplications
Teach your students what happens when they multiply a number to 1, a number greater than 1, a fraction, and a fractions that equals 1. Students will need to open the single player Minecraft world “Fractions and Multiplication” to begin this activity. In order to progress, students will need to construct math models that prove patterns when they are multiplying numbers with different fractions and integers. This simple activity would help teachers explain to students how the product of a number multiplied by a fraction greater than 1 is greater than the given number, while the product of a number multiplied by a fraction lesser than 1 is smaller than the given number. This activity helps students who struggle to multiply a whole number or a fraction by a fraction to extend previous understandings of multiplication to solve real world problems.
Multi-Model Multiplication
If you are looking for how to teach long multiplication to struggling students by Minecraft, this exercise can help impart the concept of multi-digit multiplication. Teach your students how to multiply a whole number of up to four digits by a one-digit whole number, or even go a mile beyond and try multiplying two two-digit numbers, with the help of rectangular arrays, equations, and/or area models. These math models would help students grasp the intricacies of the multiplication algorithms. To begin, students are required to load the world around Multiplying Multi-Digit Numbers, and start in a single player world. This activity will teach your students how to use rectangles to solve multiplication problems and how to base 10 in multiplication problems. Struggling students will be able to multiply multi digit to single digit whole numbers at the end of this activity.
FAQs
How to teach long multiplication to struggling students by Minecraft?
Using blocks and NPCs, Minecraft helps struggling students solve increasingly difficult multiplication problems with the help of arrays. Multiplication doesn’t come easy to most students, but with the help of arrays, students can visualize the equation at hand and come up with an accurate answer. Using the colorful blocks in Minecraft, students solve single digit and double digit multiplication problems by creating arrays and with the help of the Distributive Property of multiplication. All students need is a hint of creativity and problem solving skills to be able to use this activity.
How to teach multiplication concepts to grade 1 by Minecraft?
Teaching multiplication to 1st graders is no picnic. However, experts say that 1st graders will be better able to grasp the concept of multiplication by studying repeated addition first. If your students love Minecraft like most kids, chances are they will learn multiplication with no difficulty. Minecraft is great for introducing multiplication to students who are struggling with the concept or even for those who need an extra reinforcement. Using Minecraft, students will be able to write multiplication equations, draw pictures of multiplication equations in relation to grouping objects and learn that multiplication is just repeated addition in essence.
How to teach multiplication tables easily by Minecraft?
Mastering times tables is a vital skill that children must learn before they enter high school but most kids struggle to learn mathematical tables by heart. Fortunately, there are Minecraft multiplication tables that can be downloaded to help kids learn tables in a fun and engaging way. Teachers can download Minecraft printable multiplication tables and multiplication charts for each number for their students. If your students already love Minecraft, they will find this activity fun and indulging and will learn their tables by heart in no time.