How to Use Digital and Printable Math Activities in Your Classroom
Things have changed significantly in recent years when it comes to how we teach. Specifically, moving from printable activities to primarily digital activities.
While this may not be a huge shift for elementary students who came into school when digital learning was being implemented, it created a big shift for many teachers. The shift to digital learning created a lot of questions about how to take what you have already been doing and make it digital. There have also been many questions about how to manage the digital classroom. We have a blog post about online classroom management here.
Whether you are looking for ways to take your original printable activities and make digital math worksheets or how to turn centers into digital spaces, we have some ideas to help you.
Digital Math Worksheets
For many teachers, having printable math worksheets on hand was an easy way to always be prepared with quick math activities. This doesn’t have to change when you shift to digital math worksheets!
When moving from printable worksheets to digital worksheets, we like to shift and call them digital activities. While we love a traditional printable activity, there are so many fun and engaging ways to use digital activities – especially for math!
Here are some of our favorite digital math activities.
- Digital Math Practice: Fractions Halves & Fourths Activities
- Digital Math Practice: 2D & 3D Geometric Shapes Activities
- Digital Math Practice: Data and Graphing Activities
- Digital Math Practice: Telling Time to the Hour
- Digital Math Practice: Measuring Length, Measurement Activities
Each of these activities includes at least 20 “digital pages” or activities that students can use as practice to demonstrate their understanding of a new concept, once it has been explicitly taught. These are also great for using in centers!
Digital Math Center and Worksheets
In addition to having single digital math activities ready to go, it can also be helpful to have some easy digital math centers to use in the classroom.
While traditional centers require movement from one place to another in the classroom, digital math centers can be completed by students at their desks. On certain days, this can be a huge benefit because it helps manage student movement around the classroom (which helps with effective classroom management).
However, on other days you may want to have students up and moving around. The great thing about digital centers is that you can do both. Here are some ideas on how to do digital centers at students’ desks and in traditional centers around the classroom.
Digital Centers At Student Desks
If you have a digital classroom where students have a 1:1 laptop or computer, you can have them do digital centers in this way. We also have digital literacy centers if you would like to read more about them. This also works well as a way to do centers if you are teaching all online classes.
- Organize your favorite digital math activities into folders on a digital platform, such as Google Drive, Seesaw, or Lumio.
- Assign students the centers you want them to complete that day or week.
- During math time, allow students to work at their own pace at their desks.
- During this time, walk around and check-in with students. Take time to pause and help students who need extra help.
- Have a folder of extension activities set-up for students who finish early.
Digital centers done this way are great for allowing students to work at their own pace. They are also a great way to differentiate. You can create different folders for different students and skill levels.
In addition to the format above, you can also have one center where you call students back to work with you in small groups. While you work with small groups, students can complete digital activities at their desks. Read more about small group math instruction.
