Unit One Gizmo: Finding Patterns

For this entry I did another gizmo because I'm waiting to be placed with a teacher in Chandler's district. I chose this gizmo because we had been working on patterns at the end of last week and I thought it looked interesting. This gizmo, I thought, was a bit boring because after a while the patterns become predictable. I thought that the show relationship button would be helpful for children who don't understand how to do the pattern just by doing it. It shows how many you need to add by showing the multiplication and a number line which lays out how many numbers you jump on the line to get to the next number in the pattern.

If I could change anything about this gizmo, I would make it use a variation of patterns ranging from basic to difficult. Also, I think it would make this less monotonous by making it into a game by timing how long it takes for a student to solve the pattern. I would probably only use this gizmo in the very beginning of a patterns unit because I feel like this shows very basic and easy patterns but does not challenge students as I would want to later in a patterns unit. 

Unit One Gizmo: Number Line Frog Hop

The gizmo I chose for this assignment was the "Number Line Frog Hop". I picked this particular gizmo because it looked like a very fun visual learning tool to help with addition and subtraction. The goal of the gizmo is for you to start from one point and then figure out how much you need to add or subtract so the frog can get from its original place to a fly's place so the frog can eat it. I really loved this tool because I think it could be very useful to children that need to visualize how to add and subtract in general or just how to use a number line. I like that you can add more flies to the line and that it can leap using how many ones and tens combined it takes to get to a fly. Also, I like how the gizmo shows the equation it used to jump places. However, I wish it would show the frog jumping using only increments of one.