Create Pattern and Base 10 Blocks in Keynote

Don’t have pattern blocks or base 10 blocks in your classroom? No problem! Create your own virtual blocks in Keynote! You can also create these in Pages and Numbers, too! Would be a great way for students to illustrate their thinking by creating a book about their knowledge of numbers or math shapes in Pages and export as an ePub!

Pattern Blocks

Create pattern blocks with shapes. Did you know the green circle in a shape means you can manipulate the shape’s sides and thickness? Explore how selecting more than one shape will allow you to subtract parts of a shape to create a new one. The other feature I absolutely love is that when you are resizing a shape, you will see words like square and radius as well as the degree of an angle. This is great hands-on math exploration!

Base 10 Blocks

Create base 10 blocks with tables in Keynote. Copy/paste to create multiples and there you have hands on math for stations or any other math work while using iPad! This isn’t just for younger students, either! Students can demonstrate their knowledge of fractions and decimals by filling in cells in the base 10 blocks.

Here’s a how-to video to get you started:

Click HERE to download the Keynote deck with all of the shapes and base 10 blocks created for you to practice!

Happy creating!

The Key(note) to Coding

I am a huge fan of Keynote, both on iOS and OS X devices. I love the versatility in this tool. I enjoy using Keynote to demonstrate how this application goes way beyond a tool for presentations. When a tool constantly amazes you and allows you to learn over and over again, it becomes one of those that you cannot live without! Keynote is that tool for me and I love uncovering new ways to bring learning to life with the use of a technology tool such as Keynote!

I am really excited to share with you all that my iTunes U course called The Key(note) to Coding is now live in the iTunes U store! You can access the course by clicking here. Here is the introduction from the course:

There is a misconception when it comes to thinking about coding; some think it’s only for computer programmers and others think it’s too difficult. While we all weren’t created to be professional coders, we can encourage kids to understand the basic premise of coding. To put it simply, coding is giving a set of instructions to the computer to create an action. In this course, you will learn how to create a project with your students by using Keynote to create tangram shapes and learn the variety of ways to format shapes while taking note of the shape’s placement, size, and rotation. Once the tangram is complete, students will write all of the “code” so that another student can replicate their tangram. It would be very difficult to teach someone how to recreate a particular shape with precise measurements, but when given the exact “code” students are able to follow it and replicate the tangram with ease. In addition to coding skills, this project helps students develop positive feelings about geometry as they classify and short shapes. In addition, students learn vocabulary for working and manipulating shapes, such as arrange, flip, size, position, and rotation. It’s perfect as a stand alone project targeting STEM or within your geometry unit. This course is designed for the Mac because of the advanced tools in Keynote, however, students can use this course as a guide for building and creating tangrams on an iOS device as well. This course is geared for grades second and beyond, but can most certainly be modified for even younger students. Have fun as you learn the Key(note) to coding!

Hope you’ll download it and give me your feedback! I’d love it if people tried creating codes and shared them with others to try!