Infuse IEFA with Technology!

This week I used some wonderful stories selected by OPI to support Indian Education for All, and infused these lessons with technology in kindergarten and 1st grade classrooms. Keep reading for ideas you can use in your own classrooms!

In Ms. Logan's kindergarten, we read the story The Moccasins by Earl Einarson. I digitized this book by recording it into Adobe Spark Video, allowing it to be projected onto the screen. This also allows it to be used by students as an audio book in listening centers. Click here to access the digitized version, or scan the QR code below.

After reading the story, we brainstormed very special items that we love and made a list. I then showed students how to use the drawing tool in Seesaw to draw the item they love, then label it using the text label tools and tell about it using the microphone. The kindergartners did a wonderful job of drawing detailed pictures and writing sentences about their special items.

In Mrs. Davey's first grade, we read the story Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Leitich Smith.

After reading the story, students discussed vocabulary from the story, and Mrs. Davey created an anchor chart. The anchor chart included the words: jingle dress, jingle dancer, drum, celebration, and tradition. Students were then shown this video of jingle dancers, and Mrs. Rusche-Nicholson brought a jingle dancing dress to the class to show the students. This led to wonderful questions and answers about the dress, the jingles, and the tradition of dancing at pow wows.

Students then used the free app PicCollage Kids to create a collage using vocabulary from the story. Students used the web search tool in PicCollage Kids to search for images, then labeled each image using the text tools. They could customize their collages by changing the font, colors, and backgrounds of their collages.

When they were finished creating their collages, students uploaded them to Seesaw. Using the "record while drawing" feature, they used the arrow pointer tool to point to each image and tell about the vocabulary words.