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Conversations With Socrates

In social studies, students were able to have a “conversation with Socrates” through the use of a prerecorded voice recording of Socrates.  The voice recording was put into their social studies folder in Showbie*.  All the 6th graders were able to access the voice recording through Showbie.  Students were then able to create their own responses to the thought-provoking questions from Socrates.  The next step was to record their answers to make a conversation.

Step 1 – Listen to the Socrates recording located in Showbie

Step 2 – Record your responses in Garage Band, iMovie, or QuickVoice

Step 3 – Import recordings into Garage Band or iMovie

Step 4 – Create a new project, splice, and combine the recordings to make a conversation

Step 5 – Be sure to save your project

*Showbie is a wonderful tool to help make your classroom paperless.  It can help to get materials to all students, groups of students, or even individuals.

Janice Conboy @Mrs_Conboy

& Whitney Cavanagh @WhitneyCavanagh

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Academic Vocabulary Student Driven Review

Academic vocabulary words can be tricky for young students to understand since they are not words readily used in their daily language. The second-grade team was looking for a way for students to define and review these words in an accessible way.

We used an app called Puppet EDU (formerly called Shadow Puppet) to create short slide show videos with the students voice recordings.

Students were placed in small groups to complete this activity to allow for collaboration and more communication about what these words mean to the students.

Each student was given a graphic organizer to come up with synonyms for the word in “kid friendly” language. Then, each student was asked to draw a picture to show what their word meant to them.

Once we had some definitions, synonyms, and images to explain our vocabulary words we added them to the app Puppet EDU.

Students were able to record their voice over each image or text to explain what those words meant in their own language.

We shared our work on Seesaw, labeling each movie within a vocabulary folder, so all students can access these at home or at school to review the words often!

What an easy, and student driven, way to reinforce our academic vocabulary words!

Check out a great example here: https://goo.gl/qgnLlu

Lissa Blake, k-2 Instructional Coach

 

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Voice and Choice in Math Assessment

Our class took a geometry assessment today on 3D shapes. Students demonstrated their knowledge on the app called Educreation. In the assessment they were able to choose the shapes they were working with and then they had to record their understanding. This aligns to the standard 7G.A.2

To Get Started Open EduCreations App on your iPad. Hit record.

  1. Drawone of the following shapes and explain verbally (with your speech) the number of vertices the shape has. Then draw a line of symmetry through the shape.
  • Cylinder
  • Cube
  • Rectangular Prism
  • Sphere
  1. Drawanother shape from the list and explain verbally (with your speech) the number of vertices the shape has. Then draw a line of symmetry through the shape.
  2. Describe verbally the relationship between the two figures you have chosen.

Stop recording and save your video.

Educreation offers a free “classroom” to share and organize projects.

Janice Conboy & Whitney Cavanagh sixth grade teachers

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Using Audio Recordings to Give Every Student a Voice!

Today we read Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. After a class discussion about how important it is to be kind to one another, our class decided each friend should make a promise to think about what we say before we say it!

Sounds like an everyday activity in a Kindergarten classroom right!?!

Well guess what…..what happened next made it so much better! Each student got the chance to reflect, create, and take ownership over this simple activity by simply using their voice and a drawing pad on a device!

Today we used the Explain Everything App for the task at hand!

Step 1. Each Student opened Explain Everything on their device and chose a background.

Step 2. We drew a heart and wrote our name using the writing tools. Don’t worry if it isn’t just right your students can erase and try again.

Step 3. Each students was able tell me their own promise and why it was important to them by simply pushing the record button to start and stop their own recording! Everyone gets a voice and can share their learning!

We took this one step further by exporting the recordings and pictures to seesaw so each student’s family could hear these promises as well! Seesaw is great for allowing families to see, hear, and share in what their child has been learning about in school!

Kristy Hopkins