Well, I just updated our class website! Ahh! Don't you love that feeling of making something better and more organized!? It makes me so happy when I see things improving!! This got me thinking though... How do you use technology in your classroom? A couple coworkers and myself were able to go to the MACUL (technology) conference. I have had so many ideas since then and I'm slowly starting to integrate more and more technology into my classroom. I already use lots of videos/songs for learning, as well as SMART board activities. Right now my students are using the computers during their centers. I'm always trying to think of new things to do that will help my class to run smoother as well as integrate technology! QR codes are the BEST! I have many books recoded with QR codes ready to be scanned. I learned at the MACUL conference an "extension" that you can have if you use google chrome as your web browser where you can make any page you are on into a QR code! Super helpful. I have attached all of our notes from the conference at the bottom of this blog! Make sure to take a look and find some new ideas! Just this week I have recorded my first video lesson for our STEM (STEAM) center. I decided to start small. If you look at the home page of my website you will see the words "this week" where I will be trying to record some lessons each week for students to follow along with lessons, repeat lessons as needed or listen to lessons when absent. This is my attempt at an in-class "flipped" class. To do this I used the explaineverything app (which I am NO expert at ... yet!) but I at least have my first video behind me!! :) Last year I also used plickers which I really like but I am trying to stay away from multiple choice questions for the kinders. I also really liked to create and use Kahoots! This is my current goal (after finishing more work on our class website). I would love to create Kahoots for some of our end of year assessments but I know they again will be multiple choice - not my favorite assessments. My tech goals for this week -Prep the class set of computers (ALL charged!) for a Kahoot for next week. -Create at least 3 Kahoots. -Video record 1 writing lesson. -Finish updating website Later goals/to do -Video record a lesson for teachers for our upcoming PLT Any other suggestions for use of technology in the classroom!?
Video of students working on STEM lesson. This is both my first time creating a video lesson and the first time my students have completed a video recorded lesson. Still looking for ways to make this better!
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Every year at the beginning of the year I ask my students what they would like to be when they grow up. Yes! In Kindergarten I'm already asking!! I always love to hear their answers; some don't know yet, some say something their parents or siblings do like "work at a bank" or "work at a store" and some have cute answers like "I want to be pretty" or "I want to be a mom/dad". I always learn so much about them & try to bring the things they are interested in, into our classroom setting.
This year, to my surprise, I had a handful of students that said that they would like to be a scientist when they grow up! This does not seem to be a very common career choice in a Kindergartners eyes so to hear this from 4 of my students got me, a science major, so excited to bring more science into my classroom this school year. After school one day I came home to my usual Ellen show where she had a guest on named Steve Spangler. In all honesty, the kids did not come to mind at first. The first thing I thought when I saw his science experiments (being the science nerd I am) was WOW! THAT WAS COOL! I was totally engaged! Then I quickly turned my brain back to my students (being the teacher nerd I am) and thought, how can I do this in my classroom? Ellen closed the segment by saying that Steve makes science kits for kids to do at home! I needed this for my little scientists in my classroom!! I asked my principal if we could get a kit for our class and he said yes! The students were SO excited! I cant wait to get the kits into our room & get my students asking questions, working together and really getting into their learning by experimenting! Check out these videos that got my students so ENGAGED & EXCITED about Science!!! We just had a collaboration day about Technology and the things we are going to do in our classrooms for Friday, our schools Technology day! There are so many cool tools out there to help students learn! The kindergarten team is going to video tape our students teaching a lesson. Each teacher chose different content and we will break up our content into 5-6 lessons (for the small groups in our classrooms). Once we are finished we will all post our videos to a shared blendspace so we can ALL access the videos! We will each record 5-6 videos but we will end up with around 25+ videos of content all created by students! Blendspace is a website I learned about that crates a mosaic of videos that you can choose right there through the search. For example, one of my blendspace lessons are letters, so I searched letter videos on blendspace and was able to create a mosaic of songs about each letter of the alphabet! I also have blendspace lessons for sight words, math songs, digraphs and blending, brainbreaks and many more! Here is an app I came across when I got home later that night and spent my whole night technology surfing on the web! Oh the life of a teacher! :) The colAR app is an app where you can download images off of their website for students to color and then when you open the app and hold your device over the colored image, it comes to life on the app! It becomes an interactive 3D image on thedevice . I think I am going to use this in our class for one of our writing assignments. I will let the students color the hot air balloon image I downloaded for FREE from the colAR website. We have just had Dr. Seuss week at our school so I will use the colored hot air balloons on their lockers and then use another app, Aurasma (below) to show a video of students writing and the "Places they wills go". They will write & then read about what they want to be when they grow up and their goals for the future! This app looks so fun! A co-worker showed me this app. She linked up locker name tags with videos of here students using the Aurasma app. Here is a video I found that explains Aurasma better than I can explain it. I'm thinking of using this app for my library corner. Students will open the app, point it towards the book they want to read and then I will pop up reading the story to the student! I would like to see if just my voice could be on there so that way students are still looking at the words and images on the page as I am reading, even when I am not actually there! I would also like to record my students reading their reading series! I would also like to do this with some of our vocab. words. They can point the device towards the vocab. word and then see an example as well as the definition of the word. Another app I learned about was Plickers. This is a quick assessment app where each student gets an answer card that has choice A, B, C or D around the outside edges. Students turn the card to hold up the correct answer. The teacher uses their device to take a picture of the cards and the answers are automatically recorded. This saves time with grading and can work as a quick exit slip to see if yes, students understand or no, students need more practice with the content we practiced that day. Similar to Plickers is Kahoot. This is a website where you will create a list of multiple choice questions and students, on their own devices, will click the correct corresponding answer. The trick with this one is that all students need a device, but it is much more kid friendly than Plickers. My students LOVED Kahoot, we just have to rent out schools laptop cart to use it. Oh my goodness do my students LOVE GoNoodle. This is a brainbreak website with tons of videos already there and safe for students! There are also videos for indoor recess! Every time you watch a video you get a point and your end up building characters! My students love to watch these characters take shape and every time we finish one we print them and start a new character! If you don't use GoNoodle I highly suggest it! I have learned so many col technology tips in the last year that my head overflowing with ideas and things I would like to do and try out in the classroom!! I will continue to post these as I learn more and more! :) This is my Number of the Day board. We have a different numbers that we post everyday, and then I just placed some white, laminated, card stock below the titles so we could use dry erase markers to fill out our answers. Everyday I post a number in the orange star and have students fill out the forms (attached). This helps with practice for greater than, less than, place value, word form, expanded form, even or odd, and one/ten/hundred more/less.
All of this was created and modified from Megan Begg's TpT & Passionforprimary.blogspot.com
I was having trouble with tracking students progress with their writings. I looked for some ideas on TpT, but couldn't find anything that fit exactly what I needed so I decided to create my own writing clip chart. This chart has been working GREAT! Students check in with me every time they are ready to clip down to the next step and I am able to easily see where students are with their writing. I also like how organized the students have become with their writing now that I have started using the clip chart. I have seen great progress from before the clip chart to now! How the clip chart works: Students must first fill out a Thinking Map to organize their thoughts and plan their writing. Then students begin their rough draft. For this draft I am not worried about spelling or punctuation (they can fix that later). For this section I am mostly interested in their writing making sense and following their Thinking Maps. Next students will check their own work using a colored pen. They have checklists they use for the different writing themes we are focusing on each week, as well as themes we have discussed in past weeks. Once students have checked their own work, they have a partner check their work. This is when students are making sure their writing makes sense and that they have no spelling or punctuation errors. After they have their peer review, students may begin their final draft. Each student re-writes their piece with their best hand writing and with all of the corrections fixed in their paper. Finally the student turns in their final draft where the teacher reads, corrects and conferences with the student. I have created a sheet to record things that were good about the students' writing, as well as goals for their future writings. This clip chart has been working great and I really like the structure it gives the students when writing!! All parts of the writing clip chart are attached below! Feel free to download & use! :)
Today for our grammar review we played a game. I am currently teaching summer school so most of the topics we cover are review. While the students seemed to be doing fine with nouns, they were struggling with the types of sentences (Declarative, Interrogative, Imperative and Exclamatory) as well as Relative Pronouns (Who, Whom, Whose, Which and That). I decided it was time for an intervention and some fun!
To review these topics I broke students up into groups with various levels of understanding within each group. I then gave each group member a sheet of colored paper to create the blue team, the green team and the yellow team (you could always have more!) All of the student sat in a circle around a bucket in the middle of the circle. Then came the review! I began asking various questions to the whole class: "What type of sentence is this: Go walk the dog!" "What do you put at the end of an interrogative sentence?" "List 3 proper nouns" "Write a sentence with 2 common nouns" "What does a pronoun replace?" "What are the 5 relative pronouns we have been discussing?" And the overall review question: "Write a declarative sentence that has at least 1 noun and 1 pronoun. After each question, students would turn to their group to discuss their thoughts and ideas about the answer. Once each student had talked with their group, they wrote their answer on their colored piece of paper and shot their piece of paper into the basket in the middle. This became a competition and students couldn't wait to answer so they could throw their piece of paper into the bucket. When normally you ask a question and you get a couple students raising their hands to participate, I now had all students in my class participating and being brave, answering questions even if they weren't sure if their answer was correct!! After all students have shot their papers, the ones that made it into the basket were pulled and read out loud to the class. We could tell what team the paper came from because of the color. If student's answers were correct, their team got a point; if student's answers were incorrect, we discussed, as a class why and their team did not receive a point. The students seemed to really enjoy this activity! I was able to see some great collaboration and team work as well as hear discussions about the topics to assess where students thinking was. This activity is so easy to modify and the students were so engaged! I will definitely be doing this activity again! Then came the review! I began asking various questions to the whole class |
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