Developing Sequencing Skills

Sequencing is the process of putting events, objects and ideas in a logical order. It's a skill that we use throughout the day, often without even knowing it. For adults, it is second nature. For many students, it is something they need to practice. It needs to be taught explicitly. It needs to be regarded as a thinking process that can be broadly applied across many areas. In school though, it is usually taught as simply the ordering of facts and information. This rote memorization reduces sequencing to lower order thinking.

Sequencing contributes to students' ability to understand and develop their reading comprehension. It is a valuable tool for identifying the components of a story, examining the structure and retelling the story. Through an examination of sequencing in narrative texts, students also hone their writing skills. When applied to mathematics, it can be used in timelines. Just to refresh your memory, a timeline is a way of displaying a list of events in chronological order, sometimes described as a project artifact. It is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with dates alongside itself and usually events are labelled on points where they would have happened (from Wikipedia).



Timeline Creators

Buzzmath - Engaging Practice

Buzzmath is a great 1-to-1 middle school math tutoring program that provides rich activities, instructional support and data management to track students' progress. It was designed by a company from Montreal, so the units are aligned with Canadian Math standards. There are on-demand examples and solutions  for every practice activity. There is also a built-in calculator for students to use. https://www.buzzmath.com/

 

The students in my class have really enjoyed Buzzmath. The site uses a star & medal reward system that motivates them to build up their points and excel to the next level. It is a very engaging program that is easy-to-use and fun. It is a great way to assess their understanding. In our class, students spend about 3 periods per week working through the different units to reinforce the concepts they are learning. Many of the students have been using it at home as well. 

Foldify - Math in 3D

Foldify is an app that lets students create customized shapes to meet a huge variety of educational goals. Students can create 3D objects (from nets) that further understanding or demonstrate mastery with applications like these:

- identify/combine geometric shapes
- advance spatial recognition
- comprehend, calculate surface area and volume
- build number sense
- explore probability


Choose a template and customize it with multiple creative tools; you can even import your own photos to be printed on the foldables. Blank templates provide nets that form triangular pyramids, cubes, rectangular and hexagonal prisms, and spherical shapes, along with houses, vehicles, creatures and humanoids, hearts, milk cartons, and more. Your creators can see what their nets will look like as realized 3D shapes in real-time within a side panel on the screen.

Source: http://www.lessonplanet.com/professional-development/courses/ed-tech-foldify
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqCh8ILou_c