What better way to illustrate understanding of math concepts that to apply that knowledge creating word problems? That’s exactly what Mrs. Shapard’s second graders did using the Book Creator app!

Toward the end of the fraction unit, Mrs. Shapard asked her children to write a story using the concept they had just learned. As I rolled the iPad cart into their room, the students were busy handing out manipulatives to use with their stories. There were cubes and teddy bear counters and pattern blocks and more. Of course, these had to be played with before we could even begin rewriting their stories!

The students received their iPad and opened the Book Creator app. We chose the Landscape design in order to have enough space for pictures and text. Each student would create two pages. Page one (the cover) would have the story problem typed along with an illustration drawn using the Pen within the app. The second page would provide the answer using text. Our original plan was to use manipulatives to represent the answer. That proved to be a bit tricky. They could draw their answer but when asked to transfer that knowledge using a different medium, there was slight confusion.

• “How do we put these together?”
• “What should I use to show my answer?”
• “I can’t make the blocks look like my drawing.”

The students’ comments and questions were valid – the blocks, bears, etc did NOT look like some of their illustrations so this part wasn’t making sense to them. Therefore, we slightly changed the original plan to offer a choice – represent the answer by either manipulatives OR drawing with the pen tool.

The students are becoming experts with the Book Creator app. As soon as they completed their drawings, they immediately found a quiet corner to record.

Since we decided to create a class book, the students were to email their book to me. (Since my iPad is an older version, I don’t have the luxury of being able to Air Drop – An awesome feature!).

Once I received the books from the students, it was a quick and easy process to combine each into the one class book. (One thing to remember – there may be extra blank pages that will need to be deleted. Since we were limited on class time, I deleted the extras after putting the book together. Students could very easily do that step.) I then uploaded the book to Dropbox so that it can be downloaded by others (see directions below).

Mrs. Shapard’s Class Book: Fraction Word Problems (Read the directions below to download to an iOS device or to a computer using the Chrome browser.)

Below is a video of the process (this is also included in the back of the class book).

Directions to download book to your iOS device (iPad, iPhone, etc):

• You will need the iBooks app (free) installed on your iOS device.
• Click on the book link above (while on your iOS device).
• Tap on the download button.
• Choose Open in . . . and then choose Open in iBooks
• The book is now in iBooks on your iOS device.

Directions to read the ePub book on a computer:

• You must use Google Chrome as your browser so that you can download the Readium app. The app will not work on any other browser.
• Instructions on Reading ePub Books with the Google Chrome Readium App