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Grandparents Day 2015

Today was our annual Grandparents Day! Grandparents start the day with a breakfast with their grandchildren, and then they are able to join the students in their classrooms. We took this opportunity to show them our Pic Collage skills. Students made a "freestyle" Pic Collage with the help of their grandparents. It was awesome to see the students be the teachers and create a lasting memory. Some of their work is below.

Learning to use Pic Collage

I introduced Pic Collage to my students this week, and they picked it up pretty well! We started with a simple Pic Collage of school supplies. I showed students my example below first.

Then, we worked through the process with their own school supplies. They took the pictures of their school supplies which provided good practice with the camera. Next, we added it to the grid in Pic Collage. The last step was to add the text. They had a lot of fun with this, because they got to choose the font and color. It was also a good opportunity to talk about choosing fonts and colors that are clear and readable with the background :) The last step was to save and Air Drop their collage to me. Below is a student sample.

Now that they had a handle on how to use Pic Collage, it was time to apply it to our learning! We were talking about sequencing this week, so I asked students to work in their groups to put our story cards in the correct order.

Once they had the sequence figured out, each student used their iPad to take a picture of each card. Then, they were instructed to insert their pictures into a Pic Collage in order. They finished up by numbering the pictures and inserting a sentence explaining each part of the story. Below is a student sample.

They finished the lesson by using their collage to summarize the story with a partner. Now that we're experts, we're going to show off our Pic Collage skills to our grandparents next week on Grandparents Day!

Growth vs. Fixed Mindset

This week we have been learning about growth versus fixed mindset. We started by reading The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. You can find it on Amazon here.

It's a great story to get kids thinking about how to look at a problem or task differently. After reading and discussing the story, we really dove into the concept of a fixed and growth mindset and what that looks and sounds like. I used a great bulletin board set I found on TpT from Sarah Gardner. You can find it here. We went through each pair of mindsets and talked about the differences and why one is a growth mindset and the other is fixed. After, I put the bulletin board up in our hallway as a daily reminder to have a growth mindset. I think it turned out great :)

Later in the week, the students worked in groups to sort statements into growth and fixed mindset. It was a great way to check for understanding and to work on working together as a team!

Our First Virtual Field Trip

Now that we are through parent-teacher conferences, I was looking for an activity that might help the students understand that technology can help us be a part of something hundreds or thousands of miles away. I stumbled upon a virtual field trip for Red Ribbon Week sponsored by Discovery Education. The Santa Ana Police Department was participating at a live event showcasing their K9 police dogs. They would be sharing how the dogs are selected, trained, and used on the job. The event was held during our lunch/recess, so I let the students choose to voluntarily stay in for the field trip. All but five of them chose to participate! Yay! I explained that all of the activity was happening live, and that it was like we were in California watching it with those students in person. We found California on the map and talked about how far away it is and how long it would take to get there by plane or car. I think they understood the concept! We wrote and submitted questions ahead of time hoping for a shout out question live on the air, but that didn't happen. It was still fun! They were very engaged and attentive during the field trip.

iPad Cases

Now that we are using the iPads every day at various times throughout the day, I've noticed the students using various items to prop up their iPads at a more comfortable angle. That got me thinking that maybe we could get stands for them. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the district already had another case with built-in stands for all of the iPads. I requested to have them delivered, and the students are very happy with them! The only downside to them is that in order to use the camera, the students have to remove them from the case. We can live with that though :)

iPad Storage Dilemma

I am struggling to figure out what to do with the storage situation for our iPads. When we got our cabinets, I was relieved that they weren't enormous. However, when we opened them we discovered the iPads were in dish racks with power strips attached (see picture below). Functional, but I'm discovering that it makes putting the iPads away everyday difficult. Ideally, I would like to teach the students the correct way to put the iPads away themselves, but that won't work with the current setup. The racks are very heavy when full, and trying to put them away with the racks inside the cabinet is cumbersome. Ultimately, I decided to ditch the racks and detach the power strips and use paper sorters to keep them upright. I think this system might work better for me. I still have to add velcro to the bottom of the paper sorters, so they don't move around. I would also like to attach the power strips to the walls of the cabinet. Do you have ideas for easy iPad storage in the classroom? I'd love to hear what works for you!