Students learn new concepts and extend their understanding during the guided practice portion of Independent Digital Lessons. Guided practice activities create a rich learning environment for students through engaging and interactive videos featuring real on-screen teachers, virtual manipulatives, and paper-and-pencil Student Notes.
Students experience one of four different guided practice activities—Story Time, Math Chat, Learning Lab, or Z-Squad. Each guided practice activity is designed to help students engage with grade-level math in different ways. For example, Z-Squad helps students grow their own understanding of themselves as competent mathematicians by featuring similarly aged and diverse on-screen students working through problems and persevering through challenges.
Throughout these activities, students use digital manipulatives to construct their mathematical thinking using visual models. Zearn Math digital manipulatives also give students opportunities to test and confirm their reasoning, with precise feedback to help them find and correct mistakes. Student use of digital manipulatives during Independent Digital Lessons is balanced with use of concrete manipulatives during Concept Exploration.
Students are also prompted to complete problems in their paper-based Student Notes to transfer their software-based learning and strengthen knowledge retention. After solving an un-scaffolded problem in their notes, students are prompted to check and correct their work. Students can use these notes as a reference throughout the remainder of the lesson and during future learning. There are typically 3–4 problems in a guided practice experience, and one usually includes paper Student Notes. Student Notes for each Mission are included in Zearn Notebooks or can be downloaded and printed individually from Teacher Accounts.
You can experience our four types of guided practice activities here: