Friday, March 23, 2018

Ten Frame Mania App FREE on the App Store

Check out this great FREE app from Greg Tang, author of The Grapes of Math. Ten Frame Mania is the latest Greg Tang Math game! Play it to learn and exercise your number sense. It helps you understand the cardinality of numbers, how to play with them, and how the different numbers work together. It’s concept is so simple, yet addictive and fun!

Monday, March 19, 2018

Traci's Summer Courses


Using Classkick for Instant Feedback
June 18th 8:30-11:30 Lincoln Center, room 308
REGISTER HERE

Let's TACO 'Bout PicCollage
June 18th 12:30-3:30 Lincoln Center, room 308
REGISTER HERE

Seesaw Activities, Folders & Skills (for intermediate to advanced users)
June 19th 8:30-11:30 Lincoln Center, room 308
REGISTER HERE

Seesaw Basics (for beginners to Seesaw)
June 19th 12:30-3:30 Lincoln Center, room 308
REGISTER HERE

All of these courses are worth 3 OPI renewal units. Don't forget, if you are planning to use any of these courses for step up, you'll need to complete the step up request form online at bit.ly/BillingsPD.

Nikki Vradenburg, Teacher Liaison for PBS Montana, also put together a great list of summer PD opportunities in Montana and surrounding areas. CLICK HERE to view her list!

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

Peeping Awesome Classkick Activities

I've been creating some Easter-themed activities for Classkick. Click on the images below to grab a copy that you can use as-is, or edit and adapt to your own classroom needs. Remember to check the Classkick YouTube channel for quick, helpful tutorials, or email me if you have any questions.




Bunny Collages in PicCollage EDU

Let your students create these clever bunny collages as a way to publish a writing project, and become familiar with tools in PicCollage EDU.
To create this, have students use the web search tool to search for grass, bunnies, chocolates, etc. They can double tap the grass picture to set as the background of their collage. Remind them to add "png" to the end of the image search to find images with transparent backgrounds. They can use the FREE Easter-themed stickers in PicCollage EDU, the doodle tool, and the text tool to add additional details and words to their collages. When finished, have students save to Seesaw to share!

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Directed Drawing - Tech It Up!

Use this adorable FREE directed drawing activity from First and Kinder Blue Skies and let students draw digitally using an app like Doodle Buddy or PicCollage EDU. Then, they can add to Seesaw and use the text tools to write a poem, tell a story or add a reflection. Super cute and simple St. Patrick's Day idea!

CLICK HERE for a bunny directed drawing that you can use for Easter!

Sunday, March 11, 2018

SmarTap App

See, Learn and Talk is a unique application to facilitate speech and language development in young children. An experienced and certified Speech-Language Pathologist who has been working with children for 20 years has designed this application in order to provide concrete support for language development to parents, fellow speech and language therapists, ABA therapists, educators and Teachers of Speech and Language Disabilities. Billings teachers, submit a help ticket to have this app installed on your iPads for FREE!

Weekly Tech-y News with some Tech-y Shenanigans!

Click the image to download a PDF.

Friday, March 9, 2018

Draw & Tell Fun

The FREE app Draw & Tell is an absolute favorite for letting students tell stories and explain things they know in a fun, engaging and creative way. Students are able to use stickers, drawing, voice and even add their own photo as a background. I love the moveable stickers for telling math stories or making characters move. The images or videos easily save to Seesaw to share with others. Check out some of these fun creations from Mrs. Parisien's first graders, who just learned Draw & Tell today!

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

FREE Math Apps from PBS

Check out this great collection of FREE math apps for young learners! Variety of apps to help students practice number sense, greater than, less than, equal parts, measurement, and much more!

Lucky Numbers in Classkick

Classkick is a fantastic FREE tool that lets you share assignments with your students and view their work in REAL TIME, while providing immediate feedback. It's amazing! I adapted the Valentine's Day double digit number activity I did for St. Patrick's Day. This is a fantastic hands-on activity to introduce your students to Classkick. Click the image to copy the activity and use with your students.
Mrs. Bishop adapted this activity to differentiate in 1st grade. Click the links below to use her adaptations in your room.


PBS Edcamp for PreK-3rd Grade Teachers

MontanaPBS will host PBS Edcamp Billings, MT, a participant-driven professional development event for PK-3 educators. Participating educators will have the opportunity to collaborate around common goals and challenges through topics they select on the day of the event. Edcamp participants will walk away with resources and ideas they can immediately integrate into their classrooms. PBS Edcamp Billings will be held on Saturday, May 19, 2018 at the Lincoln Center from 9:00AM to 3:00PM. This is a free event, open to all Pre-kindergarten through grade 3 teachers, administrators and pre-service teachers. OPI Renewal units will be available to all who attend!

What is Edcamp?

Edcamp is an unconference; a participant-driven professional development event for educators.

Unlike a typical conference, Edcamp educators decide the session topics on the day of the event.

CLICK HERE to register.
BPS teachers, PBS Edcamp is available for OPI renewal and Step-Up Credit. Be sure to complete the appropriate forms on the BPS Professional Development site.