My grant allowed me to introduce my students to a critical thinking and problem solving concept that I could never have achieved otherwise. Incorporating the Break Out boxes into my math class has taught my students about persistence, communication, team work and other skills that will carry them not only into my math class next year, but into future live endeavors as well. They have provided and exciting engagement opportunity that allows my students to “fail forward” and understand that making mistakes is ok. I hope that next year I will have lessons made for each math domain and that maybe some of my students will take the initiative to create their own break out box games, as well.

The other grant I received was for Dash and Dot robots. These have introduced my students to coding and how coding can be used for not only math class, but for computer science and other activities, as well. They have become teachers and mentors to younger and older students in facilitating learning with other classrooms, showing them how to use the robots, how to read codes, etc. My hope for next year is to have more standard related lessons prepared for the integration of these robots.

Some ideas that I saw at the Summit that I would be interested in learning more about and trying are the swivel camera. In my school, we too have a lot of students who have frequent absenteeism and I feel recording my whole group lessons would give these students access to content that I otherwise may have a difficult time going back and covering for them.
I also would like to learn more about STEM and STEAM projects such as the Lego walls and the drone kits and how I could incorporate them into my primary math classroom.