Winter Break App Share-Day 1

I am going to kickoff my Winter Break App Share with an app we use everyday in the classroom, Epic! Epic! is an eBook library with over 10, 000 books for readers 12 and under. It covers all genres and interests. It is free for educators, but it does cost $4.99/month for families which includes up to 4 reader profiles per account. Students earn badges and incentives for reading, and their reading log is available for the teacher or parent to see what they've been reading. There are also several audio books that can be read to the students. My students love Epic! Students use this app during our reading intervention time and during Daily 5. They always have the option to read traditional books from my classroom library, but they enjoy Epic! so much I don't see them in my library very much. Learn more at www.getepic.com

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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 :)