Hi, friends! This week, I’m chatting a little bit more on creating digital products. I was asked by a Savvy Apple community member what would be the easiest digital product to create as their first resource. Before I answered, I thought of how I speak passionately about how easy it is to create digital resources and how you can also easily change them to a new theme or learning concept. I also have a FREE digital resource planner for the Savvy Apple community to help make planning a digital resource a breeze. (You can download it here for free 😊) But, I haven’t really dived into the easiest ones that I find to create. So, this week I am chatting about the concepts and skills of digital resources that I have found to be the easiest to create into a digital product. Remember, my digital products are mostly math related, but you can apply this post to other subject matter. 😉
Importance of Basic Math Operations
The basic math operations consist of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. In order to learn more advanced math, students must learn these concepts first. These are also the easiest things to use when creating digital math products. Math is used in our everyday lives. If you follow me on Instagram, you have probably seen me sharing ways to learn math through everyday activities. We use math for cooking, balancing our checkbooks, and so much more. I have so much fun doing this with my children! Students build upon the skills and concepts they have previously learned. This is why it is so important for children to learn these important concepts and not move on to the next concept until they have mastered the current one.
After we have learned the basic math operations, we need to then understand the order of importance of the operations. This helps us to learn how to use these operations in a variety of combinations. We should start our students with simple combinations of addition and subtraction and then move to more complex problems of combinations of three or four basic operations. Because my products are focused on early grade levels, I don’t create too many complex math problems in my digital products. Students should be taught that addition and subtraction are equally important, and they should be carried out in the order that they appear from left to right.
Achieving Math Fact Fluency through Automaticity
Many of you might remember math flash cards to memorize math facts. You could also remember writing math facts 10 times each. Math automaticity basically means that you can immediately deliver the correct answer to a math problem. This is important to achieve math fact fluency. Fluency is the ability to solve math facts accurately and swiftly. Now, our students have fun and engaging ways to achieve math fact fluency through automaticity. Teachers use digital games and activities to make learning fun. When students don’t need to take the time to process and calculate multiple math facts, they have more cognitive space to learn more. This is where automaticity comes into play. We want students to have automaticity but also understand what the operation means.
When creating digital products, I have found that I can use basic math concepts to easily knock out many resources in a day. First, I like to start with an addition product. These consist of basic slides that I can make fun and engaging for my students. Read about how I use clip art, colors, and themes to individualize the resources for my students here. Once I have an addition resource created, I can easily go back, duplicate the product, adjust numerical details slightly, and change the addition symbols with subtraction symbols. So easy! 😃
Converting Existing Math Fluency Content
As I previously mentioned, we want our students to understand math concepts for later success. As math teachers, we can use traditional and digital ways to teach math fact fluency. Ten-frames and counters are traditional ways to practice math concepts. Visualizing helps students see quantities as groups. This especially helps with the basic math concept of addition. Digital resources can also be used to help students visualize quantities. You can use fun characters as counters in digital math products. No matter which way we use, or a combination of both, students benefit from automaticity and the instruction of math facts throughout their lives. Math fluency products can also be easily converted for virtual or hybrid learning. Digital products are used consistently in Google Classrooms.
Site-Wide Sale
To show appreciation to all teachers who work so hard to support their students’ learning, Savvy Apple is having a site-wide sale of 25% OFF all resources in the Savvy Apple Shop today, May 4, and tomorrow, May 5! Click here to access the SALE.
Thank you so much for your support! Are you struggling creating your digital resources? Let me know in the comments below, and I’d love to help! Or, join the Savvy Apple Community FB group where teachers of all skill levels gather to share tips and knowledge about all things digital resources. Hope to see you in the group! 😊
I hope this post helps build your confidence a little bit more for creating your own digital products. Basic math operations are so simple to use as your first product. Word problem digital resources take a little more work to create, so I always steer teachers to use one of these basic math concepts for creating the easiest digital math products. Let me know which basic concept you choose to start with. I can’t wait to hear.
Have a great week!
Jess