17 July 2017

Using Technology to Publish Student Writing

Blabberize allows you to add voice to a hand-drawn picture that you upload to the site.
I have used this website for students to publish writing. I often integrate science or social studies into my writing block. 
For example, for third grade you can have students write about a region of Georgia to go along with your science standards. Then have students draw a picture of an animal from that region. After that you would take a picture of the drawing and upload it into blabberize. Lastly, you will record the each student reading their writing. When you play it back it will look as if the drawn animal is talking and reading the writing. 

Some ideas for each grade level (based on 2017 Georgia Standards of Excellence):
K
1. Have students illustrate a picture of themselves and write about themselves or their family at the beginning of the year. Record their dictation of their writing.
2. Have students draw a picture of the Statue of Liberty or Bald Eagle and tell about American Symbols after writing about the topic.
3. Have students draw themselves and then tell about rules and why they are created.
4. Draw police officer, fire fighter, etc. and write about the work they do. Record each student reading their writing.

1
1. Students can draw a picture of Johnny Appleseed (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about Johnny Appleseed.
Record students reading their writing about Johnny Appleseed.
*same activity with Ruby Bridges, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Sacagawea, etc.


2
1. Students can draw a picture of Jackie Robinson (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about Jackie Robinson.
Record students reading their writing about Jackie Robinson.
*same activity with Mary Musgrove, MLK, Juliette Gordon Low, Jimmy Carter, etc.

3
1. Students can draw a picture of John Cabot (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about John Cabot
Record students reading their writing about John Cabot.
*same activity with Henry Hudson, Christopher Columbus, etc.

4
1. Students can draw a picture of Paul Revere (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about Paul Revere.
Record students reading their writing about Paul Revere.
*same activity with John Adams, Patrick Henry, Benedict Arnold, etc.

5
1. Student scan draw a picture of Thomas Edison (or other person you've recently learned about)
Have students write what they have learned about Thomas Edison.
Record students reading their writing about Thomas Edison.
*same activity with George Washington Carver, Alexander Graham Bell, Langston Hughes, Babe Ruth, etc.

Examples:




Example 1

Storybird
This website allows you to set up a classroom account for free. Students can then create their own books and use professional illustrations in their book. 
I use this website for students to create ideas based on the illustrations provided. Students can get as creative as their imaginations allow.

You can share their finished book by embedding the book on your webpage, sharing it in an email or even through class dojo and google classroom.







Voki

Your students will absolutely love Voki. You can publish any piece of writing that your students have completed by creating an avatar on voki and having the avatar read the writing. I often have students type their writing into a google doc and then copy and paste that into the text portion of voki for the avatar to read. My students especially enjoy the strange accents that the characters have.

Example 1

Example 2

Voki Tutorial









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25 March 2016

Five for Friday - 3/25/16


My favorite link up of the week with DoodleBugs Five For Friday 


I'm looking forward to celebrating Easter and spending time with my family this weekend. 







We've been making our own superhero characters and then writing a fictional narrative about saving the world or town from a villain. This was a lot of fun and students loved it. I had students type their writing on google docs. They also water color painted their town. I took a photo of each student laying down and acting like they were flying. I then added that photo to the town they painted and added a piece of crepe paper as a cape. 






If you have a library card have access to the OverDrive app on your kindle and get free books downloaded to your kindle by checking them out of this library. They even have audiobooks.  






We had our Mini Relay to support Relay for Life today at school. My students dressed as super heroes by making masks from paper plates and capes from purple trash bags. We had such great fun!




Anyone else watching March Madness? My husband loves March Madness and had me fill out a bracket. I randomly picked Gonzaga and somehow they are still in it for now.





TPT Product
My Animal Research with QR Codes is a favorite seller in my store. I recently created a similar product of American Heroes with QR Codes.

Animal Research HERE




American Hero Research HERE


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18 March 2016

Five For Friday - 3/18/16




My favorite link up of the week with DoodleBugs Five For Friday 



Before reading this post, if you live near a Chick-fil-a, you should go buy a frosted coffee and enjoy while reading. You can thank me later for that suggestion. 



MATH
My students just started using prodigygame.com for math practice and they really enjoy it. It is set up like a video game and they barely realize it is math practice while playing. You can assign specific content/assignments for them to complete while playing the game. Students can play the game in class and at home.

My students are also enjoy these Gum Ball Addition with QR Codes during math stations. 
You can get them for yourself HERE





We had a Professional Learning Day Monday and I went to a few sessions that I really enjoyed. 
The first session was about Flexible Spaces in the Classroom and it was interesting to hear about a first grade classroom without tables or desks. Students work on couches, stability balls, hokki stools, bean bags and basically anything you find at a yard sale, because teaching and yard sales go together like peanut butter and jelly. Students complete their work on clipboards throughout the day. It was very interesting and I like the idea of having some flexible seating/spaces in the media center next year. I already have the stability balls in my class, but I'm not sure if those will work in the media center. 

I also went to a session about Versatiles and they seem so fun. It is basically a hands on puzzle self checking system and can be used in any subject. Check the video below:


What I noticed, is since they have the new ones out, the old ones are on sale in the outlet and really work just as good at a fraction of the price.
You can view the outlet prices HERE.  



We read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and then students wrote a forecast for the week. For example, Monday will be rainy with a chance of grape soda. Students really like this because they like food, so it was right up their alley. After writing about this, they typed it on google docs and then created a voki.com avatar to publish their writing. 









DonorsChoose
I had a DonorsChoose project fund this week and I'm excited to get a train table, sphero robots and legos to use in the media center next school year. 
There are lots of tips and tricks to getting your project funded. I really need to write a blog post devoted to DonorsChoose tips, but for now I will give you 5 quick tips.

1. Keep the cost low! The lower the cost the more likely it will get funded. Especially if you are just starting off and trying to become familiar with DC. Make it $300 or less.

2. Check the Funding Opportunities page for your state to see which companies/organizations are paying 1/2 off on specific projects and try to write your project for that area or content to get 1/2 off.
Do keep in mind that 1/2 offers do not last forever, they last until the funds run out.

3. Become involved in some DonorsChoose Communities on Facebook and Twitter. I run the Georgia Peaches on DonorsChoose page. 
There are MANY other pages. The main ones that jump out that you should be involved in are Caring Classrooms and Kindergarten Rocks, but seriously there are tons!

4. Donate to your own project. This may seem like a strange thing to say, but you want your project to show up at the top of the list when donors search for projects. The more donors you have the higher up you will be on the list and that is why you should donate $1 to your project and have your husband donate $1 and have your mom donate $1, etc. They can of course donate more, but at the least $1. There's even a facebook page called TeachersTradingTeachers where you can trade $1 donations with other teachers in order to up the number of donors your project has. So, instead of donating $10 to your project, you could trading with $10 and have 10 donors.

5. Before donating check for a promo code that will double your donation. At the moment you can use the code CLASSACT to double your donation (up to $150). There's nothing worse than donating $10 and realizing later that it could've been $20 with a code. Being involved in these facebook communities is how I stay up to date on promo codes.






I applied to present at the GAETC conference in November. If you are interested in applying the deadline is April 1st. You can apply HERE.




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05 February 2016

Five For Friday- February 5th



My favorite link up of the week with DoodleBugs Five For Friday 





I have some wonderfully exciting news to share, I will be the Media Specialist at my school next year! I interviewed and found out this week. This is thrilling to think about as I start to plan for next year. Please feel free to share your favorite things that your Media Specialist does at your school, so I can keep that in mind. 




Writing
We read Chocolatina by Erik Kraft and Denise Brunkus, a story about a girl that turned into her favorite food, chocolate! Students then wrote about what it would be like to turn into their favorite food. Students then typed their writing and started to create Vokis.


We also read If I Built a Car by Chris Van Dusen and students designed their own car. They then wrote about the car in their writing journal. My students absolutely love sharing their writing. I had each student read their writing to the class. I noticed that my students needed to work on giving the person reading their undivided attention. So, I decided to let the person sharing their writing ask a comprehension question or two to the class after reading their story. If a student was able to answer the question they could move their "monster" on our behavior board. My students have never been so quiet and attentive while listening to their peers. This worked wonders!













Amazing Race
I talked previously about how my school is having an Amazing Race at school where teachers are on teams and completing challenges as well as counting up exercise time to make it to specific destinations. Well I am trying really hard to exercise, but I'm going from absolutely nothing to exercising so it's a bit hard. I ran some this week and we had a jump rope challenge where we needed to jump 360 times a day to earn points. My calves hurt so bad!
Here's my running partner, well not really, she likes to lay in the middle of the yard and watch me run. Our Australian Shepherd is the one that runs with me. 






Rekenrek Task Cards for Math Stations
Students love solving these equations at math stations using rekenreks. 
The BUNDLE is in my TPT store HERE

My students are also using this counting forward/backward task cards. They use a cards along with the Sock Puppets app on the iPad. They record themselves counting forward or backwards according to the card and then listen to the recording to make sure they did not skip any numbers. Students love listening to themselves talk even if it is counting! 
The Counting Forward Cards can be found HERE
The Counting Backward Cards can be found HERE






Do your students come in wide awake and ready to share something with you each morning? Mine do! Don't every tell your students which sports teams you support/don't support, you will never hear the end of it! This is at about 7:30 in the morning...





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29 January 2016

Five for Friday- Jan. 29th 2016


My favorite link up of the week with DoodleBugs Five For Friday 






Dream House Writing
Sometimes it doesn't all fit nice and neat on a bulletin board and that's ok. :)


I read the story If I Built a House by Chris Van Dusen and students first designed their house and then wrote about their house and gave reason as to why their house is awesome, great, or the best. Students really enjoyed this activity. I like to give students the paper to draw and design first to give students a chance to get their thoughts on paper without the pressure of feeling like they need to get started writing immediately. It is important to give students a chance to develop ideas before demanding results. 
Here are some of their designs.




After designing, students wrote about their house in their writing journal. Once that was complete I had a conference with each child about their writing and about adding details to different parts to make their writing more interesting. I then allowed students to get on google drive and type their writing. After typing, I talked to each individual student once more about their typed writing. We are still working on spacing correctly and remembering to punctuate while typing. 


Lastly, I helped students create a voki character from on voki.com and add their writing to the character to publish their writing. The characters are now on our school website and students absolutely love visiting the page and listening to each other's writing.







Blendspace
So, I mentioned being excited about hearing of Blendspace last week. Now, I am using it to organize websites, games and videos about specific topics we are studying. I've added these blendspace links to our class website and edmodo for students to easily access at school and home. I am planning to create a blendspace of parent resources to add to my school website as well to give parents more info about number talks, comprehension questions to ask students when they finish reading a story and lots more. 




100th Day of School
Padlet- 100 Compliments and Acts of Kindness
If you've not used padlet, it's a great place to create message boards for students to post comments, questions and show understanding.

Aging Booth- This was such a fun app. My students laughed like crazy when they saw themselves. I may have even sneakily changed some of their edmodo profile pictures to these when they weren't looking. :) 





Plickers
I used plickers as a quick pre-assessment for the measurement unit we are starting. If you've not used them yet...stop waiting! You need to print them and use them ASAP. They are so easy to use and give you real time results. 
You can order them laminated in anti-glare laminate or print them for free on cardstock. 


This is a picture of my students using plickers from earlier in the year.





This week ended great with a Pay Day song from my administrators and I was announced as the January Staff Member of the Month!











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BRANDING + BLOG DESIGN BY LAUGH EAT LEARN