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50s Day School Movie!

We celebrate the 50th day of school by dressing up in poodle skirts, rolled up jeans and hula hoop competitions!  I wanted to create something with each classroom to celebrate the 50th day integrating our technology throughout the entire school!

I took some time to research all the fun products that came about in the 1950s that our young students would know or care about still today! Each classroom picked the product out of a hat, we did some class research using a variety of tools and produced a short movie with our findings!

We learned about everything from PEZ dispensers and McDonald’s to Play-Doh and Frosted Flakes!  The kids loved learning about all the fun products that they still may use today  while we all learned a great new app, Puppet EDU (Shadow Puppet) to publish our research and share with our friends.

I took all the short videos, and put them together in iMovie with a 1950s soundtrack to complete the final project!  We all got to celebrate together by watching the movie our whole school worked hard to create in our classrooms on the 50th day of school!

 

What an easy and fun way to bring our school community together, and learn a little along the way!

Enjoy our school video: https://goo.gl/p3YGHD

By Lissa Blake @D60holmestech

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We Are Going On an iPad Shape Hunt… and I Am Assessing You!

My Kinders have been learning a lot about shapes and how to describe them.  My Kinders love to use their iPads in any way possible so all through our shape lessons we have been drawing, identifying and describing shapes on our ipads.   I decided it was time to assess my kiddos and see where they were at with all of their shapes and what better way to do it than on a shape hunt!

Each student was given a shape hunt recording form so they knew what shapes they were looking for around our room.

They were to find each shape around our room and take a picture.

Then edit the picture to isolate the shape.

 

Finally, the students used Puppet Edu to create a mini book  They selected each picture they took and then describe their shapes using the recording option in the app!

 

 

 

After modeling the process for my students

 

once, they were off! I did leave the directions on the board for my students to see in case they needed reminders but they did great! It’s amazing that 5 and 6-year-olds can complete all these steps independently!

After they finished their project in Puppet Edu they saved to their Seesaw portfolio. I was able to listen to all of my students recordings and see the shapes they took pictures of in about 15 minutes after school and I didn’t have to find time during our already busy day to individually assess each student.  I love saving time….there is just never enough of it in the day.  Now the other great thing about Seesaw is not only do I know if each student can identify and describe shapes but so do their parents!   No more waiting for report cards or parent-teacher conferences to give them updates.   Who knew that assessing for common core math standards could be so easy and so fun! There will definitely be more “hunts” in our classroom!

Kindergarten teacher Kristy Hopkins @HopkinsKinder

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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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Recording Sight Word Fun!

iPads make recording our learning so easy, and possible for our young students! We love sharing and showing what we have learned with our families at home through online posts.

This week, I was working in a ELL Kindergarten classroom, and they are struggling with learning and articulating their sight words. Many of the students parents do not speak English, which also makes it harder for them to practice at home as well. So, we came up with a simple idea for students to record their sight words using images and voice, then post them online for parents to learn at home with them.

Students were given letters and paper and were asked to spell their favorite sight word. Then they were asked to take a picture of the word, then each letter to spell the word in order.

We used a fabulous, easy app, Puppet EDU, to create a slide show and record our voice over the word and letters. Once we saved the movies, we posted them to our Seesaw account for parents to see at home!

Students are now able to use this as a guided reading center to watch, listen and engage in basic sight word practice! Authentic audience, authentic purpose!

Instructional Coach Lissa Blake