Weekly Tech-y News August 27th

Click the image to view the newsletter!

Weekly Tech-y News

Click the image to download a PDF.

Growth Goals

Love these awesome technology #growthgoals shared by TILT Phase 2 teachers! These were created using the Seesaw activities feature.

Padlet of Center Chart Ideas

I am still adding photos of center charts to this collaborative Padlet. Would love to see how you rotate your kids through centers in your classroom (whether you have Must Do - Can Do centers, traditional centers, Daily 5, etc). Check out the ideas below, and click on the Padlet to upload a photo of your own center chart organizational system!

Weekly Tech-y Newsletter

Click the image to download a PDF.

100th Day of School Padlet

I love this idea from @MrsBirzer ... she created a collaborative Padlet for students to share their answers to the sentence "I wish I had 100 _____." I borrowed her idea and made a Padlet for our district. If you'd like to have your students contribute, they can visit this link (consider sharing via Seesaw) or they can scan this QR code. (The Padlet app has a QR reader embedded!)

https://padlet.com/piltzt/eypkw3bdi5ir

Once they're in, they just click and add their ideas. You could have them add a drawing or photo, or just text. Have fun! Happy 100th Day!

Sharing a Padlet Link Using Seesaw

Of the many, many things I love about Seesaw, one of my favorites is the ability to easily share links with students (and parents) via the link sharing option.  This works from all Seesaw platforms (iPads, laptops, etc) and is such a quick and simple way to get your students to a specific location like a learning video or website. I have discovered that it's a great way to share a link to a Padlet, allowing your students to quickly access and contribute to the collaborative wall.  Sharing the link with everyone in your class will also allow parents to view the completed Padlet.  Here's how:

Duck! Rabbit! Padlet

The Amy Krouse Rosenthal author study for week 2 of the BPS Book Club focuses on the story Duck! Rabbit!  This is a very short, simple story about differing points of view, and is fun for readers of all ages.

To share our perspectives on this book, I worked with some first graders at Beartooth to make a collaborative Padlet.  Click "Read more" to see how we did it!

Created with Padlet

Feltboard in Ms. Oringer's 1st grade & Padlet in Mrs. Scheafer's 2nd grade

Loved spending time in Ms. Oringer's classroom today, where we discussed iPad expectations with her 1st graders and then gave them time to use the Feltboard app.  This was an opportunity for her students to spend time getting to know how to navigate the app, with the task of making a picture of themselves and using the letters to write their names.  Ms. Oringer's kids worked so hard and stayed on task for this lesson.  I was impressed!

Feltboard has a lot of cool features that teachers can utilize for a variety of literacy, math, social studies and science lessons.  I can't wait to post more ideas for you to see!

I also loved spending time in Mrs. Scheafer's 2nd grade, helping them use the tool Padlet to record nouns.  These kids were awesome, too!  Seriously, I am so lucky to get to meet so many amazing kids and teachers every day!

Padlet is a tool that can be used on computers or tablets, and it is a big collaborative space, or wall where students can contribute their ideas.  In Mrs. Scheafer's room, we started a new Padlet for the nouns and gave students a QR code to scan with their iPads.  The QR code took them into the Padlet, where they had to tap the screen and add their name, their noun, and a picture of their noun.  

They worked really hard, learning how to allow camera permissions and work around problems when tech doesn't work quite the way it should.  We said what Pete the Cat says: "It's all good!"  This was a great project that Mrs. Scheafer thought of and I was happy to help her with it!  We also brainstormed an idea to use Popplet for a similar activity: have students make a popple for each category of nouns (person, place or thing) and then have them add examples to each of these categories.  

They could add drawings or pictures to each of these nouns, as well.

Constitution Day is September 17th!

A wonderful 2nd grade teacher asked if I knew of any fun ways to integrate technology into Constitution Day learning.  I had fun brainstorming a few ideas for her, and I thought I would share them with you all.

There is a good, short video on Time for Kids that you could show your students for some background knowledge.  

I really like this idea:

How cute is that?  It would be great if you had a copy of the book We The Kids by David Catrow. It would be fun to start this as a collaborative document, using a tool like Padlet.  Have each student contribute their idea of what it means to be a good citizen.  Then transfer their ideas to paper and have each student sign the "Class Constitution".  So cute!

I also found this website with some good resources.  I doubt it will work from their iPads, but it could be fun to share bits of it whole group.  Lots of information.  If students can work independently from MacBooks or ChromeBooks, they could read the information and take the accompanying quizzes.

It would also be cute to have them do some kind of art project (maybe make a flag like this one):

This is simply made from cutting pieces of construction paper and gluing to a white piece of construction paper, then adding white fingerprint "stars".  ​You could then have students take a picture of the flag with an iPad (or a picture of each of them holding their flags), and upload into an app like Skitch , Pic Collage or Educreations - anywhere they could add text to their picture and label it or write what they think a good citizen is.

If you're working from a Chromebook or MacBook (this next idea needs Flash so it won't work on iPads), it would be fun to use the Read, Write, Think Theme Poem creator and have them use the flag outline to create a poem about citizenship or patriotism.

I hope these ideas are helpful, or inspire some other awesome Constitution Day or patriotic lessons. If you try anything in your class, please share with me so we can post examples and ideas on this blog for others to see!

Happy Teaching and Tech-ing!