EDIM 508 - Reflections Place Value Center Activity

The media infused presentation I created is intended to give second grade students a variety of audio/visual and interactive experiences to enhance the understanding of whole number place value to the hundreds place. This PowerPoint presentation can be used in part for a whole group model demonstration or it can be used as an independent student learning center activity in class or at home. Students can follow the activities in sequence at their own pace and take an assessment at the end to evaluate their understanding.

This presentation helps foster the development of the disciplined mind because it gives children ample opportunities to "approach the topic in a variety of ways", most of the video scenarios were authentic, problem based, and require the students to think about a solution to resolve an issue (i.e. grouping lollipops in tens and hundreds to count two and three digit quantities) and it set up an opportunity for students to demonstrate a "performance of understanding" (Gardner pg. 33-34).  The final activity requires the students to take on the role of a game show contestant to compete against the computer or a classmate to demonstrate his/her understanding of place value.    In the multimedia presentation created, the students are given six diverse activities and interactive experiences to "study deeply, over a significant amount of time, using a variety of examples and modes of analysis" (Gardner pg. 33).

This multimedia presentation center also helps to foster the development of the synthesizing mind through taking an interdisciplinary approach to understanding place value by making connections through problem-solving, narrative, fairy tail, music, and connecting math to the real world.  This activity modeled "the ability to knit together information from disparate sources [Discovery Education Website] into a coherent whole" (Gardner pg. 46).  This project reflected the components of synthesis- a goal  (description of the learning objective and curriculum content standard) , a starting point (directions to guide both teacher and student), a selection of approach ( a sequence of activities), and an opportunity for feedback from its end user (evaluation/assessment). (Gardner pg. 51-52).  Students are especially engaged by the powerful use of image, audio and video in this multimedia presentation.

Reference


Gardner, H. (2007). Five minds for the future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.