Meet Your Teacher Video

Do you send a welcome letter to your students?  My school sends the letter with teacher announcement and other information.  Last year I decided to add a video about me.  I could virtually give my students a look into my life and how I began my career as a teacher and some of my interests.  I used iMovie and created a movie trailer (short and sweet and it is soooooo easy).  I dug through my baby album and my scrapbooks to put together a video of me for my students.  I just took a picture of those pictures with my ipad.  When my video was published to YouTube, I put the link in SafeShare.TV website.  Then I put that link in the newsletter and I also added a QRcode that parents could scan with any device to see the movie.  I use http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ to create links into QRcodes.  After reflecting upon the beginning of the year, it seemed easy to make connections with my students and it was a way for parents to connect their child with me.  I am hoping it eased some of the nervousness when beginning a new school year.  Here is my video that you can use as an example to get you started on making your own video.  Just click the link below!

Meet Your Teacher iMovie

I also use iMovie trailers for class field trips and family vacations.  For field trips, it really helps make a memory and I see my students remembering what they did and learned.

Field Trip iMovie

Skitch app for Field Trips

Use Skitch app to label pictures from field trips and review what information was learned.  Check out our pictures from the local apple orchard!

I am flipped and tablet certified!!

I recently discovered Sophia.org through Twitter and I found FREE...yes FREE professional development!  I just had to check it out!  I took the Flipped Classroom Certification and I loved it.  I started to dabble in flipped classroom this year and the tutorial was beneficial to keep me going.  After that certification, I decided to take the i-Pad Prepared Certification.  The links in this tutorial were amazing!  To complete each certification, one needs to create their own lesson or tutorial.  I have created a lesson that uses flipped learning and i-pad apps.  Check it out below!

Aurasma Pet Show 2014

My  Kindergarteners created their own talented pet out of recycled material. Each student created a video of their pet and its trick. The videos and pictures were uploaded to an app called Aurasma. During the pet show, the students scanned the picture using Aurasma and watched the pet come alive on the i-pad. Here are the pictures of students viewing the pets during the pet show! The students are learning that many devices can be used to inspire creativity! You can try this app on an Android or iOS device for free!

ScreenChomp and Rhyming Dust Bunnies

My new favorite app is ScreenChomp!!! As part of guided reading, I did a small group activity to help kids say and hear rhyming words.  I read the story Rhyming Dust Bunny by Jan Thomas.  We created an anchor chart for rhyming words and had to discuss what a dust bunny was before we read.  After we read the story, the students created a dust bunny on the i-pad with ScreenChomp.  Then they picked a picture out of the rhyming bag.  They drew that picture and another picture that rhymes.  I found it helped if the students said rhyming words into a whisper phone.  When they were finished, they recorded their rhyming words.  These were posted on their KidBlog to share with their families and they love listening to them during choice time.  Here is an example below.

 

Rhyming Dust Bunny

Crazy about i-Pads and Smartboards!

I am so blessed to have many forms of technology available to help educate my students in my new district and it is time to start blogging about it!  In my kindergarten classroom, I have 4 i-Pads hooked up to AirPlay and a Smartboard.

One lesson was completed during guided reading/writing, we were working on the words I and like and writing a complete sentence using those two words.  I had the students write a sentence about themselves in their writing journal (I like...).  Then using the app Popplet lite the students took a picture of themselves to place in the middle of a character web.  They typed their first "I like" sentence in a new bubble and then typed another sentence in the next bubble.  The app allows you to take a picture of the popplet and from there I posted it to my students individual Kidblogs.

 

I have a classroom blog setup through Blogger and my hopes for the blog is to inform parents about what goes on inside our classroom and to realize all the learning and hard work a 5/6 year old does in Kindergarten!  I find it difficult to get my students and parents to realize that reading is thinking!  To help, I have started having a couple of students draw out their thinking during shared reading.  I have used the app ScreenChomp.  ScreenChomp is a free whiteboard/recording app that allows the students to use it like a drawing app and then record what they are drawing.

Here is one example!  We were reading It's Pumpkin Time by Zoe Hall. I had two students record their thinking (I liked... It reminded my of...  How would I feel...).  First, they drew their thinking in ScreenChomp and then recorded what the story reminded them of.  Here is a picture of what it looked like.

The story reminded the student about our field trip to the pumpkin patch and all the work that goes into planting a pumpkin patch.

 

Technology Integration...Oh my!!!

Teaching in the 21st Century is a blast for so many reasons!  I love learning about new and innovative ways to integrate technology to educate my students!  One of the oldest ways that I have been making videos in my classroom has been using an i-Pod Touch and a Pico Pocket Projector.  It is a quick and easy way to show instant movies.  It is also fun to project the movies on the ceiling and have everyone enjoy the video lying down.  Movies I have done in the past include reader's theatre,  sight word play-doh, number mats with tens frame, flannel board stories, and human tooth brushing demonstration.   

In this photo, the video is being projected on to the easel.

This is the projector that is connected to the i-pod touch.
It is small and very portable. 

I am finally in a wonderful school district where there are many devices to help integrate technology.  (The reason I have not had time to blog!!)  I am looking forward to learning more ways to utilize all the technology resources I have and share them!!

YouTube Video Linky Party!!

What a FaBuLoUs idea!!! Miss Nelson is having a YouTube Linky Party!  Click here to join!

My students love to create videos and it has increased their fluency and excitement in reading by recording many reader's theatre!  Some YouTube videos I use to teach and reinforce digraphs are in the prezi below.

Digraphs on Prezi

A fun video we made was a claymation of our pond habitats.   It gave the students a chance to share their pond habitats they created during our habitats and adapations unit.

I wanted ideas for more educational videos to use, which is why I linked up and you should too!

Bug Jar Math

The students created bug jars on www.kerpoof.com.  They were given a scenario where they caught some bugs in their jar and some escaped.  The students drew bugs in their jar and on the outside.  They recorded their word problem on VoiceThread and we created math equations for each drawing.  This was an interactive way to practice subtraction!

Pond Habitat!!!

Every year we have a school wide fair, and this year we decided to do a Habitat Fair.  Kindergarten was lucky to research the pond habitat!  To assess the student's learning at the end of our unit, I had them create a pond habitat diorama out of a shoe box.  They created a setting and added modeling clay pond animals.  They added so much detail and did a wonderful job explaining the animals in their habitat.  The dioramas turned out so adorable that I decided to have the students turn their habitats into a "claymation" and on our classroom blog they wrote about what was going on in their "claymation".  You can view the claymation below.

The students also created virtual ponds with many pond animals on www.kerpoof.com.  We then added them to a VoiceThread project.  The students created their virtual pond into an addition word problem.  I posted the VoiceThread on our classroom blog and the students had to write the addition equations as it played on a wipe off board.  The students said they even quized their parents at home