Educreations

Ugh!  It's been awhile since I posted.  I really did have every intention of blogging weekly... somehow all the work involved in teaching ends up taking every last minute of my time.  Maybe next year when I'm no longer a "first year teacher" I'll have a bit more wiggle room.
I wanted to follow up on what we did with Educreations in math.  It was one of my "oh wow" teaching moments!
We have been working hard on explaining how we do our work in math.  A lot of this is done verbally during whole class lessons, but unless I take notes while I'm teaching (ha-ha), I have to rely on my memory to supply me feedback for assessment.  The kids also have to write explanations, but for some kids, writing what they are thinking is still a challenge.
Enter Educreateions.
Educreations is a cool app that allows you to draw on a blank page, much like a whiteboard, and to record your voice while you are drawing. During one of our math rotations, I had the kids create an Educreations video showing how they do a double digit subtraction problem, including explanations of how and why they ungroup.  I was able to go back and view the videos to assess who was understanding the concept, and able to explain what they were doing.
  sample video

iPad PD

I was fortunate enough to get to spend the day at an awesome seminar on using iPads in the k-6 classroom, taught by Kelly Harmon.  (check out her website here: Kelly Harmon) There is so much that can be done with iPads!  I am seriously wishing that I had a full class set in my classroom to use all the time!  Or at least to have available to use whenever we want!
Some of the apps we talked about I've already been using like Nearpod and Kahoots - others I've seen on my iPad or downloaded because they are on people's "Top 10" list, but haven't really known what to do with them.

 One of those is Educreations.  I had played around with it a little before today, but most of the example lessons were geared towards the upper grades, and I couldn't wrap my head around how to use it with my 2nd graders.  Today Kelly showed us a sample of some work 2nd grade students had done explaining how to do subtraction with ungrouping on Educreations.  It was so cool!  I can't wait to get the iPads back into my kiddos hands so we can try this out.  Research has shown that teaching somebody else how to do something solidifies learning.  So we will be making mini-tutorials on how to do subtraction next week.  I will post samples if all goes well!

Popplet Lite

One of the apps that our district pre-installed on our iPads is Popplet. The first time I looked at it I kind of thouht, "Meh... this is pretty boring".  But then I discovered that you could take pictures and put them into the popplets and my whole view shifted.

The kids loved it!  (pretty much any time they get to use the camera life is good).  The first time I had them work with Popplet, they used their base ten blocks to do a subtraction problem. They had to take a picture of each step along the way, and write in numbers to describe what they were doing..

Then we tried out Popplets during Reader's Workshop.  We've been studying text features, so I had the kids take a picture of different text features in the books they were reading, and tell how that text feature helped them understand what they were reading.  The kids' creations were actually a lot better than my examples!  And I've gotta say... I'm currently doing IRR's on non-fiction text, and they know their text features!

I'm currently trying to figure out a way to creatively use Popplet during Word Work.  So far I've had them type in their words, and sort them... but they weren't super excited by this, and it was more a "you have to type your words into Popplet before you can play Chicktionary" kind of thing - some of them wanted to just take pictures of the sorts they had already glued into their journal and just be done with it so they could move on to the fun games.  :)

iPads!

Our school just went through a new technology deployment, and we received a cart of 25 iPads to share among the K-2 classes.  I have been spending a lot of time trying to figure out how best to use the set of iPads.  My kiddos are LOVING using them!  We've done some pretty creative things in the past few weeks, and the kids are always 100% engaged.  I'm hoping to spend some time sharing some of the different apps we have have been using.  As soon as I find a few minutes of spare time.

Welcome to My Classroom!!

I know, I know... most people post pictures of their class in September.  But my life was a bit out of control back then.  This is my first year in my own classroom, so I had all the first time setup stuff to do.  We also moved 3 days before school started,  and I was recovering from mono so I was tired all the time.  So here I am 6 months later finally getting around to it.

This is the view from the door the kids come in through.

Kid's select their lunch by putting their stick into the appropriate jar.  One of the class jobs is counting up A, B and C lunches and filling in a sheet for me so that I can easily enter the choices into our Synergy.  Jobs rotate every Monday, with two kids at each job, so each child does the same job two weeks in a row, but with a different partner.

Cozy reading nooks.

This is the class library, with a big comfy chair.

The "Rainbow Table" for small groups and working near the teacher, with my messy desk behind it.

Playing Around

Slot Canyons

Several years ago I took a trip to Utah and went camping with my mom and several of her friends.  I want to be like my mom when I grow up.  At 75, she was climbing through slot canyons like a 20 year old.

Up and Running

So I'm taking the plunge and trying to get a blog up and running.  I've played around with blogs in the past, but, kind of like writing in my diary, my interest always waned a few pages in...  Hopefully I can keep it going a bit longer this time!