Space Academy? In a Math lesson? You might be wondering how a concept seemingly unrelated to Math. Surprisingly, it played a significant role when I taught students how to divide whole numbers.
I made use of the Station Rotation model together with the exciting premise of a Space Academy complete with battling villains, as a creative backdrop to enhance the learning experience of this topic.
Immersive Story
I started the lesson by immersing students into the theme of Space Academy with an exciting story that was created with the help of AI! ChatGPT-4 helped with the scripting and https://invideo.io/ helped with making the script come to life!
After firing up my students for this topic, it was time to start the Station Rotation. Here are the three stations my students rotated through.
Online Station
In this station, students watch a video and used an interactive simulation in Student Learning Space (SLS) to help them learn how to divide 4-digit by 1-digit whole numbers. They were then tasked to work out the answer to a few questions on their own.
Team Arena
In this station, students worked together in groups of three or four to complete two missions. The first mission involved identifying a mistake in a provided solution and explaining what the mistake was.
The next mission was to solve as many questions as possible before moving to the next station. To make this mission more competitive, I informed my students that the team with the highest number of correct answers would be declared the winner.
Teacher-Led Station (aka Strategy Discussion)
In this station, I helped students gain a better understanding of the division algorithm using the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) approach. First, students used linking cubes to physically divide 35 into two groups (concrete).
Next, I showed them the explicit-trade method (pictorial) as mentioned in Van de Walle, Karp and Bay-Williams' Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally (2018).
Connecting the concrete and pictorial methods (linking cubes and the explicit-trade method), I helped students bridge the gap between the concrete and the standard division algorithm (abstract).
Reflection
Witnessing the excitement and "aha moments" during the Teacher-Led station convinced me that this lesson was worth the time and effort to design and implement. Students not only mastered the long division algorithm but also gained a deeper understanding of its mechanics, fostering a more positive attitude towards math. This achievement exemplifies the effectiveness of the Station Rotation model in catering to diverse learning styles through individual, group, and teacher-led activities.