Tag: 1:1 Reader’s Workshop

Combo Blog Post

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Well, I’m slacking again. My free time has been consumed with looking at houses online, so I’ve sadly pushed the blogging to the side in order to dive into paying attention to details. Good thing for technology and iPad apps, because it makes it easy to flip through. 🙂

I’m teaming up with Michelle from Big Time Literacy for her Big Time Blogging Challenge.

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Sunday’s Topic = Travel: recent excursions or future adventures. 

I’ve always had quite the travel bug in me since I turned 18 and was allowed to adventure out on my own. Having a husband from England, definitely has the bonus of being able to fly back and visit the family. I love Europe, if it wasn’t so darn expensive, I would pack and move in a heartbeat. One of my favorites was being able to travel back to London during the time of the Olympics. It was amazing to be able to walk out of my in-laws house and walk down the road to see the bike race. It is something about the atmosphere of London in general, I just feel so relaxed and at home there.

Since we won’t be traveling back to London this year, our traveling adventure is house hunting. As many of you know, finding a home on a teaching budget can be quite difficult. Our budget is low, to allow us to hopefully have that flexibility to travel back and visit Europe when we can. However today, we really begin to see the type of home we get for our price tag. House hunting is an exhausting adventure on its own. I know that when it is time the right one will fall into place.

Monday’s Topic = favorite read aloud books or novels to teach with

One of the best literacy topics that I love teaching with picture books is figurative language. I just have so much fun with the read alouds and the products that can be produced after.

I really love all of the Tedd Arnold books. Parts, More Parts and Even More Parts. Those are great for visuals and just to give the kids a good laugh. Although, I think I find myself giggling more than them. hee hee

One of the books I really like for onomatopoeia is “The Great Fuzz Frenzy,” by Janet Stevens. I bought this on a discount when I worked a book fair once. Every year it is hit or miss with the kids, but my group last year really enjoyed it.

 
Now, relating this back onto the technology side. There are many great apps or programs that you can complete after read alouds on figurative language. Comics are always one of my favorite activities to do. Programs like Comic Life have great templates that are easy to use and that can be done on a laptop or an iPad. Videos or audio recordings using iMovie or Garageband is great for onomatopoeia since it is based on sound. Having students show a visual and describe the sound that it produces. The ideas are quite endless and you would be impressed what the students may come up with on their own if you give them a little bit of freedom! 

Tune into Technology: Getting Techy with Reading

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Today I have a duel linkup for you again! Just think, more blogs that you can be exposed to if you haven’t found them already!

First up, we have Michelle from Big Time Literacy! She is running a month long blogging challenge so today we are on day #8!

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I’m also linking up with Kristin, from iTeach 1:1 for their Tune into Technology Tuesday. This is a great way to share ideas about how you integrate technology into various content areas. Check out her site for the schedule!
   

Today’s Tune into Technology topic is…….Reading!

This past year, my school/district started following the Reading Workshop instructional method by Lucy Calkins. My goal this year was to do the best I could to combine my passion of technology, with her units of study. So below, you will find some examples of how we used tech during our reading instruction, but feel free to visit the 1:1 Reading tab on my blog for even more ideas.

1) One of my big plunges this past year was getting my 5th graders to blog. I thought they may find more meaning in their responses if they had the opportunity to share their thoughts with the world. One easy way I also tried to connect with today’s techy learners was to incorporate hashtags. This really ignited the light bulb in their head, it was something they had seen and could relate to. So, they used their hashtag about something or a section in their book to be their inspiration for their blog.
As for blogging, my students used Blogger. It connected perfectly with their student Google account, so we jumped in, in hopes they could hold onto it and expand upon it for future grades.

2) Another challenge I faced this year was transitioning my 5th graders into the format of a group mini lesson on the floor. This was something I found they really struggled with to sit there, mostly because of their age. I saw a Tweet come out about a program called Nearpod, so I decided to investigate and give it a try. I began practicing with it in math, getting them used to the program before introducing it into reading, they really liked it! Mostly because it is a slide-show format that keeps them all on the same page, then they can answer confidently at their own table on the dry erase portion without the worry of their neighbor seeing what they wrote.

So, the time came to giving it a try in class, coincidentally it was also the same day I was being observed. ha ha I played with a few more options this time, giving my administrator an advanced warning. Using technology, you never know what may happen. The students brought their iPads to the mini lesson and we had a discussion about character point of view. Students annotated text from the book, watched videos from Disney films, and held discussions with one another about what they viewed. This got them really excited and engaged!

Nearpod photo Bems4OVCAAEQzxU_zpsc9f67588.jpg 
3) My third idea I want to share with you today is just giving your kids the option to have fun with the technology and reading. The reading workshop is about sharing and there are a ton of apps and websites on the devices that allow them to do that. I had students that loved to create advertisements for their books using iMovie or comic making programs, some preferred apps like Tellagami, iStopMotion or Puppet Pals. 

Pixel Press Floors

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One evening, before the end of our school year, I had been on a hunt to experiment more with augmented reality (AR) with my students. One of my favorite blogs to visit for that is, Two Guys and Some iPads. Brad and Drew are very well know for their 2 Guys Show, which you can watch at anytime from their archive on their blog, but also for their use of Augmented Reality.

So, while browsing their blog I came across their latest post that caught my eye on Pixel Press Floors. See the article HERE.

Now, I’ve tried to be the cool teacher and introduce video games into my classroom, what student doesn’t love an excuse to play games? We participated in the Hour of Code, we also used Lunacraft for math review in our classroom, but Pixel Press Floors is truly unique. Students can actually draw their own game out, on a downloadable grid sheet, using the specific codes given in their Sketch Guide. From there, students can then take an image of their grid and it will turn into a virtual world that they have created. Students can test their game out and even edit it from within the app.

I highly encourage trying this, it was by far one of the favorite projects that I received feedback on.

How can you use it in your classroom? The ideas below are not all original ideas, just blog posts I have stumbled upon while researching.

– Math Review – area, perimeter (See Lakewood Digital Literacy blog for more ideas)
– Research & Survey – What makes an engaging video game? Graph results and explain.
– Compare and Contrast – analyze various games to provide peer feedback
– Creative writing – create a comic based on your designed game (Porchester Junior School) 

Of course, the project couldn’t be complete without a little friendly competition game-off. My students wanted to finish the year with an elimination challenge, competing in teams against one another as we reflected the iPads onto my Mac.

Here is how I introduced the App to my students.
1. This was being used as an end of the year math center, so mid week as students were getting closer to starting, I went over the directions. How-to videos and the Sketch Guide were left for their curiosity in our math Blendspace course.
2. Students had an organizer to complete reviewing 3 or 4 games that were already created in the Pixel Press Floors Arcade. Students rated the game, and included pros and cons for ideas they would use. They also received a story map to incorporate their game into creative writing later on. We talked about how games have a storyline and a purpose like our books.
3. Once their organizer was uploaded to Schoology and approved, they were able to begin sketching their plan on the grid paper with the use of their guide.
4. Uploaded their game when finished and began receiving peer review.
5. Ideally if we didn’t run out of time, I was going to use the idea from above for the students to create a comic based around their character and the story line they created.

I encourage you to check the app out while it is free. It is available on both the iPad and now the iPhone! Happy creating! Visit the App Store to check it out!
   


Aurasma in a Wax Museum

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Before moving to a 5th grade classroom last year, the biography wax museum project has been a tradition over the years. As much work as it can be, the students always look forward to it!

What is the wax museum project you ask? Well, just like the famous Madame Tussauds, students select a celebrity or historical figure that has meaning to them. They focus on the standards of nonfiction text features, while also researching to discover any unanswered questions. Following their approved figure selection, the students then receive a rubric to follow that outlines the project, expectations and check-in dates. After having a little over a month to complete this, one of the best parts is the big presentation! All three, fifth grade classrooms, invite the school to participate in this experience. The teachers turn into the museum curators and the students are dressed, silent, and standing like wax figures to mimic the individual they read about as our guests wonder around visit our exhibit.

While the tradition of the wax museum project has always been the informational poster, I remember being a 4th grade teacher and wishing I had the time to read all of the student posters as I walked through the rooms. Having had the students previously, it is always exciting to enjoy and be entertained by their hard work. After recently becoming intrigued with the Aurasma app this school year, the wax museum project was one instantly came to mind that I needed to connect this app with! With a mixture of Aurasma and Chatterpix, below you will find a brief description of how you can incorporate a task like this into your classroom!

1. Once you have your project idea in mind, have the students complete any necessary work in advance in preparation for the Aurasma and Chatterpix portion.

2. Find an image of the face you want to use (check for copyrights), preferably a front profile, and save it to your camera roll.

3. Open Chatterpix, upload your picture, and complete the process to save your Chatterpix as a video on your device.

4. Make sure you have Aurasma downloaded and that the portion of the project you want to connect the augmented reality video to is complete. (My students had their posters finished before we began the chatter pix and Aurasma portion)

5. In preparation for generating the Aurasma trigger pictures, I printed out the Aurasma logo onto labels in advance, this way students could place the label next to the picture on their poster that they were going to use. This made the process much easier for our visitors so they knew where to look since time was limited for visitation sessions.

6.  Setup your Aurasma account, if you don’t currently have one. See my previous post HERE on how to set an account up and get started using Aurasma.

7. Follow the directions above to also create your Aura using a trigger picture (with the label) that will activate your video to play from Chatterpix.  I have students login and upload to one class account to make it easier for internal classroom purposes as well.

8. Once everything is connected, make sure your class or public visitors are informed of your channel name in advance. Then, test out your finished product and you are ready to go! Pay close attention to the tips given in the presentation from my previous post, it will help give reminders about lighting and on making sure to take clear trigger pictures. I even projected a reminder information page onto my Smartboard in case parents didn’t catch our links on social media for instructions.

The great thing about this part of the project, is that the augmented reality really assisted our younger visitors! When they may not have been able to read, they were still able to learn while they visited our room and report back to their teacher with interesting facts!

Here are what some of the final Chatterpix videos look like once completed and attached to Aurasma. 

 

Steve Jobs image from NY Post, Marie Curie image from Wikipedia

Literacy Leveler App Review

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Every Tuesday, our district iCoaches send us helpful links that we can incorporate into our teaching as their “Tech Tuesday” email series.

Well, this week there happened to be an app listed that caught my eye. I’m very much a frequent follower to Apps Gone Free, but this one happened to not be listed on there, however, it was still discounted as FREE from the normal price of $4.99 in the App Store.

So, what is the app that I am leading up to? It is called, Literacy Leveler. Literacy Leveler is available for both the iPad and iPhone. If your school uses a reading leveling F&P system or by Lexile Number chart, this will be an app you won’t want to miss!

The app is so simple to use. Once opened, you can scan a book’s barcode and up will pop the lexile number and level. As with any library, not all books are listed in there. But, my students and I have found that it is pretty successful, you can also use the option to try and search by title. I can’t begin to tell you how much time this has saved when my students search for books independently at their level.

I highly recommend keeping an eye out for it!