Digital Reflection

I can remember the very first class of EDUC 584 vividly and even more the heaviness and anxiety I felt in my chest about the level of technology that was going to be necessary to be successful. As the class is coming to an end and I reflect, I am astounded by the vast amount of digital tools I have learned about and my level of comfortability using these tools. This course has provided me with a venue to explore technology in ways I didn't know were possible. As I move forward, I know I will integrate technology into my literacy instruction using the many tools I have learned in class (i.e. Voki, Padlet, VoiceThread, Storybird, Animoto, etc.). In addition, in the upcoming school year I plan to make use of technology as a way of communicating with families via a class blog. I would also like to set up Kidblog for my students to begin their blogging adventures as I did throughout the course.

Below, I have created a Storybird story to highlight some of the many tools and technological terminology that I have learned. Enjoy!

Summer Survey

Summertime is here! Tonight I learned how to use a new digital tool, Google Forms. I used Google Forms to develop a survey about "summer favorites". Tell me about your favorites.

Literacy Project- Opinion Writing: "To Squish or To Not Squish"

Hey, Little Ant is a great story about a young boy who has decided to squish an ant and can think of many reasons why he should. But the ant has its own reasons for why he shouldn't. The boy has to make a decision, to squish or not not to squish. One grade 2 Common Core State Standard focuses on Opinion Writing. This engaging book was perfect to use to get students to explore writing opinion pieces. What kid hasn’t experienced this dilemma, “To Squish or To Not Squish”? My students never have a problem stating their opinion about “EVERYTHING” but do need to work towards being able to write about their opinions using supportive reasoning.

Prior to actually reading the story and starting the lesson on opinion writing, I used this YouTube video as my “hook” to the lesson. The video “totally” got my students at the edge of their seats and they immediately began blurting out their opinions about the topic.

After viewing the clip I then read the text aloud. Then the students and charted all the reasons from the text that the The Boy and The Ant provided  about whether “To Squish or To Not Squish”. Thereafter, students “weighed-in” on their opinion about the dilemma and partnered up with students of similar opinions. In identified groups, "To Squish" and "To Not Squish", the groups of students identified a key quote from the text that best supported the Ants opinion and the Boy's opinion. Each group at the opportunity to explore Voki an online tool where students can create animated characters and either record their voices or choose a voice for the animated character. My students thought it would be more fun to choose a voice. Each group member had a different role in the process of creating a Voki for the boy and for the ant. The students were SO engaged in using the  technology! Here is what they came up with (click each picture): 

I then proceeded to explicitly teach and model how an opinion piece is formatted. Students were partnered/grouped with students with similar opinions and collaboratively wrote an opinion piece of their own to tell whether, "To Squish or To Not Squish"! I was impressed with all of my students level of engagement. Students were given an opinion writing rubric to assess their pieces (I used the same rubric to assess the students writing, as well), conferenced wtih me, and then went on to use VoiceThread to record their opinion writing. See what you think...what would you do?

Later on students had the opportunity to use their writing to have a little "mini-debate" about whether they felt the ant should be squished or not. My students haven't had much experience with debates, however as you will see some of the students were quite passionate about their opinions. Press play and see what you think. Has your opinion changed?

The next day students were given the opportunity to write their own opinion pieces on a topic of their choice and used an opinion writing rubric to assess their writing. I also used the same rubric to assess their writing. I was completely "blown away" with their independent pieces! I attribute their success to the many interactive components and integration of technology throughout the lesson. Here are a few of their pieces.

So...that's it! I hope you enjoyed the components of my lesson. Let me know what you think. What books have you used for opinion writing that have been engaging and effective to teach students how to write an opinion piece?  

Movement In The Classroom

This year I had a lot of active boys in my class and with the academic demands steadily increasing I found that many of my students needed "brain breaks" throughout the course of the school day. In the past I had tried mini exercising routines like jumping jacks and Simon Says activities but found that these activities left my students more silly then ever! So I began researching some "brain break" ideas online that would be engaging for my students but yet serve its purpose of refocusing my students and providing them with a little break. I happened upon this site: Teach Train Love 20 Brain Break Clips: Movin' and Groovin'! Upon trying out a few of these "brain break" clips I found one that I LOVE and use often. I think you will too! I think it would be appropriate for grades 1-5. Here it is, Number: 4) 'Move to Learn' Fitness Break Video.

This Fitness Break Video is so great because it is led by the video instructor and doesn't require the teacher to facilitate the exercise, which is beneficial for the students to get a teacher break and for teachers to get a 5 minute student break (to get a little something done:)) The music is upbeat and the mini steps are all primarily familiar to students so they can "jump right-in". I always find that my students have fun with the "brain-break" moves and are refreshed and ready for the next lesson. Take a moment to view it, give it a try with your students, and let me know what you think!

Sensationally Savvy Advice-Digital Story "Final Draft"

Ok, so here it is the final copy of my digital story. My students wrote letters of advice that they would give to my upcoming second grade students. The first time around I had some difficulties getting a clear picture of my digital story when using my SMARTboard. To correct this problem I tried uploading my story in 1080p format, however the Blogger program wouldn't accept it. I then tried uploading my story in 720p format and again I was unable to do so, I was again rejected by Blogger. I have concluded that the Blogger could not upload these formats because they were too large. So I settled on uploading my digital story in 1080p format to YouTube and then embedding the video into Blogger. My video quality improved greatly but the process took much longer. It took about an hour to upload to YouTube. My hope is that the video quality will improve when viewed on a larger screen, like when using my SMARTboard. 

Needless to say, the experience of creating a digital story was fun and very engaging for my students. Viewing the video gave my students a meaningful way to reflect on the school year, as well. I look forward to using the digital story in the Fall with my upcoming Second Grade Students. I believe the students will be receptive to getting some advice from their peers!

Take a look see at the "Fantastical" Second Grade Advice that my savvy students created.

P.S. Friendly letter writing is a second grade skill that students are expected to master, in my district. Here is a clip of the song I taught my students early on in the year and I used it to review the parts of a letter. This little tune continues to help my students remember the parts of a friendly letter. I predict they will use it to help them write a friendly letter in the future.

Sensationally Savvy Advice- Digital Story “First-Draft”

I was having trouble deciding what kind of digital story I could possibly do being that it is the end of the school year! But I then remembered how November from our class text explained that we don’t have to see the use of technology as an add-on and that we can incorporate it into anything that we do! So as I began looking over my “typical” end of the year activities it dawned on me that it would be “fun” to incorporate students “voices” into their typical letters of advice to the upcoming second grade students. In connection to the CCSS for second grade students have been working on letter writing throughout the course of the school year. Students have had pen-pals, they write letters to the Celebrity of the Week every Thursday, and have written letters to each other recommending books to read. So, I decided to have students write their typical second grade advice letter but then had them chose a sentence or two to highlight to record.

Early on in the year I introduced my students to a song to teach them the parts of a friendly letter. It has been very effective I even sometimes hear them humming it just for fun. Listen to them sing the song!

After viewing many different digital stories on various blogs I decided I wanted to explore using iMovie for my digital story. My students all drew pictures for what would become the “title page” of our digital story and then students voted on the best one to be inputted into the story. Together students brainstormed ideas of what they could say to introduce the digital story and then students “auditioned” for the part to do the introduction. Students then wrote their letter demonstrating the appropriate friendly letter format. Finally students brainstormed ideas for the closing of the story, students “auditioned”, and one student memorized the closing and ended our story. When viewing the movie I thought it was missing a little “something” so I went back and added in my advice to my upcoming students and some “happy” music! Here it is…

Hope you enjoyed my digital story. I look forward to using this digital story on the first day of school year for my upcoming second grade students (I predict this might even get students excited and curious about other ways we might use technology throughout the year). In addition I will also leave the hand written letters on students desks for the first day. Please let me know what you think.  Provide me with any feedback you might have. Thanks in advance for your time.

P.S-While I found iMovie a little “tricky” to use because of it being difficult to merge still images and videos, I feel like the more I play with the program the easier it may become. I plan to play around with it this summer. My son is always doing something that would be fun to capture. Look for an upcoming iMovie soon!!!

A Teacher's Paradise

“School’s Out for Summer!” Well almost, I suggest at some point this summer you take a journey through the TeachingOasis it is a fantastic teacher resource that includes activities and resources for all of the curricular domains, all developed and created by Jessica Winston-Saunders. It includes readily accessible, FREE resources and activities for Language Arts, Math, Science, and Social Studies. In addition the site includes Monthly Ideas. For example, just last month I printed some May task cards for a center and for math I printed a fun fractions memory game that I used for my students during guided math. As you swim through the paradise known as the Teaching Oasis you will also find a Resource page with “extras” like reading labels, parent communication logs, classroom awards, and MORE. When you dive even deeper into the site you can also find Ms.Winston’s Blog. On her blog she shares her long-range plans, upcoming end of the year activities and MORE. For example, YouBe The Teacher, Student Created Lesson Plans for students to create a lesson to teach the class. She also includes great links to resources she personally uses. The Flip Flap Template set is great to use for Interactive Notebooks.

I give this site 4 Stars. I hope you too can find a useful way to use this site. Are there others that you can recommend?

New Fun with Storybird!

During class last Thursday a few of my clever and creative colleagues and I had the opportunity to explore Storybird, for the first time. Storybird is an interactive online tool that can be used to create stories and read already developed stories. There is an array of different genres of artwork that you can choose from to develop your story. For example, there is a whole page of different types of "scary" pictures. I like how you have the option of choosing your pictures prior to creating your story (pictures guide your story) or you can write your story first and then hope to find pictures that match (story guides your picture choice). On our first try with Storybird we chose to pick a genre of pictures first and then create our story based on the pictures. Together we wrote a "quaint-little" story about a little girl named Susie who likes to go exploring. As we dabbled with the program I came to realize that my students would most likely LOVE this story making tool. It was very user/kid friendly and fun! My colleagues and I shared many laughs while creating our story. The pictures we chose helped to spark ideas and take "Susie" on an adventurous journey. I believe in using Storybird my students' writing could be enhanced compared to what they may produce with simply pencil and paper. My colleagues and I ended up developing a story that could be used to teach students about making inferences based on picture and text clues. Take a look...it's in our book...



So...Did you know that Susie was using her imagination in her house the entire story?
Storybird users how would you rate my story?

I would LOVE to find out how other teachers are using Storybird in their classrooms...

Wonderful World of Wordles

Have you ever heard of “word clouds?” Wordle is one of many free online programs that allows the user to generate "word clouds." The original Wordle program allows you to input your own list of words or copy and paste from a document/website in order to see a graphical representation of word frequency.  Wordle gives greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in your text, making them appear bigger. You can personalize your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. Some of my favorite "word cloud" generating programs are: tagxedo, ABCya word clouds, and VocabGrabber.

Ways Teachers Use Wordle in The Classroom

1. Summarize a Text-Copy and paste an article into Wordle and the words that are used most frequently will appear larger. These highlighted words aid students in identifying the main ideas and important concepts of the text.
2. Character Traits-You can use Wordle for a unit on character analysis to increase reading comprehension through Character Trait Identification. Write 5 most identifiable and important character traits for any character in the text(assign different characters if done in Reading Group). If you want the trait that best describes the character to stand out you would type it in multiple times.
3. Create a Wordle Gift-Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Grandparent’s Day, or even students' birthdays, can all be celebrated with Wordle. Simply, input your favorite adjectives for your chosen person, generate the word cloud, and it can be added to a greeting card, poster, calendar, or whatever else you choose.
4. Unit Review/Preview Posters-Students can create KWL charts on what they would like to learn and find out about a given topic. Alternatively, create word clouds at the end of a unit to summarize the key learning points or vocabulary from a given topic.
5. Using Wordle for Classroom Polls-Very simple, for example in the beginning of the year you might discuss with students about their favorite sport.    Each child then types their favorite sport into the text part of wordle.   The wordle created automatically shows the most favored color.   Other ideas - birthday month, fav. animals, hardest spelling word, feelings etc.   This type of Wordle could easily be adapted to higher leveled tasks and polls. 

In the beginning of the school year my students created student profile "word clouds" using Tagxedo.  I had all of my students write a few positive adjectives that describe themselves for a beginning of the year get to know you activity. It is a fun way to review what an adjective is and get to know each other. The students then input the adjectives into Tagxedo, and it generates a student profile "word cloud", which then students can choose a shape that will be formed by the words. Check out some of my students Wordles using the Tagxedo program!

Snake

Dog

Joy

Angel

Lightning Bolt