App of the Week: Write About This

Mrs. Goodwin recently shared this app and I thought it was really cool.  What an awesome way to incorporate writing into your reading stations!  The free version is a little restricted, but it is still a great resource.

When the app is opened, the students choose how to find their writing prompt.  They can search through categories, choose at random, search, or even take a picture with the iPad camera to create their own.

When the prompt is selected, the students may write and then record their voices reading what they have written.  They can save it to the gallery on the iPad, or send to the camera roll.  If saved to the camera roll, it will save as a movie so you can hear them reading.

How could you use this?

Of course, there is the obvious.  Just let the app guide the way.  Have the students randomly choose a prompt and write!

But what if we think outside the box?    Let's look at this feature that allows you to create your own prompt and save it to the "custom" category.  You can add your own picture, type the prompt, record the prompt, and save for your students.  Maybe you can add a picture that has to do with your Social Studies or Science content.  You could add a picture of a story you have read or your retelling cards and let your students write and record a summary.  You could even add a math picture problem and have students explain their logic in writing.

This is a great app that I hope you will all download and start using right away!  Just let me know if you need help brainstorming ideas of how to make it work with what you are teaching.

Hour of Code/App of the Week: Kodable

This week is National Computer Science Education Week, and all of our students are participating in "The Hour of Code."  This includes activities for all age groups that teaches them the basics of computer programming.  To be honest, I was scared to take this on because I know NOTHING about programming. But once I saw how simple and child-friendly these activities were, I got really excited about it.

I have been blown away by the educational value that teaching code can have.  After going through some of the activities myself, I learned that programming incorporates cause and effect, making predictions, problem solving, reasoning, map skills, basic math, and more!  We complain often that our kids don't know how to THINK, and these activities force them to do exactly that.

If you want to find an activity for your class or play around with it yourself, click here.  There are several apps and websites you can choose from.  My favorites so far are the Angry Birds activity (3-5), the Kodable app (K-2), and Tynker (1-5).

I have begun teaching my K-2 students how to use the Kodable app, but we are limited by the time they are with me.  It progressively gets more in depth, so I would love to see them using this in class as a math station.

This is the most basic level of programming and, of course, doesn't use actual code.  However, it does lay a foundation for how coding works and begins teaching problem solving that even Kindergarten students can figure out without having to even read letters or numbers.  It works like a game, gradually progressing them toward more difficult tasks.  It's just like math or reading--they have to learn letters or numbers before they can read or add.

I encourage you to download this and play through a few levels yourself.  See for yourself the skills that you use while you play.

Scratch Experiment

I have been playing around with Scratch, which is a simple programming program.  This is my first attempt at a simple activity for our little guys.  Just press the letter on the keyboard that each picture starts with and see what happens.

App of the Week: Random Number Generator

This week's idea is short and sweet.  I know many of you draw sticks from a cup to randomly call on students for student engagement.  This app does the same thing right from your iPad or iPod.  Simply give it a range of numbers, and it will randomly select one for you.  There are many versions you can download for free.

This is the one I downloaded.

 It is really very self-explanatory.  Here are some ideas for how students might use this in stations:

• Have students generate a number between x and y and write it in expanded form, identify the place value of a certain digit, etc.
• Have students generate two numbers and write a word problem involving those numbers.
• Have students "draw" their number.
• Use the number generator with a numbered list of words, sentences, activities, etc.  Students generate the number, then go to that number on the list.

Once again, this is just a tool that helps make activities you are already doing a little more engaging for your kids!

App of the Week: Touch Cast

I discovered this really cool app last week!  It allows your students to do videos that look like newscasts.  Imagine how this could tie in to your curriculum!  Have your students do some WRITING based on something you've discussed or read.  Have them practice READING it until they are fluent.  Then have them ORALLY present it through video.  It goes right along with what we discussed as a faculty about language.

I can see students acting as a reporter live at some event you've studied in History, making an instructional video on how to do some activity, interviewing a character from a book....the possibilities go on and on.

They can choose from several video types:  Instacast, Newscast, Businesscast, Sportscast, Here's How, Review It (think book or movie review), and Travel Diary.

They then choose from several apps to play during the video (just like a REAL newscast):  web page, photo, question, Google Map, Google News, Poll, List, Twitter feed, quote, etc.

Then all that's left is recording the video.  It's very user-friendly and will be a piece of cake for the kids to do.  They can then send you an email that you can share!


Check out this really cute example that Mrs. Towns did to explain how to do a jumping jack.  I was just experimenting, so the app you see on this video is the school website.  It could easily be replaced with any of the apps listed above.   http://www.touchcast.com/ramitchell 

If you are using Internet Explorer, copy and paste the link above in Chrome to view the video.

Mystery Skypes

We had two great Mystery Skype Sessions yesterday! 

Mrs. Williams' 5th grade students participated in a game with a class from Massachusetts.  Neither class knew the location of the other, so they took turns asking each other yes/no questions to narrow down an educated guess as to where the other class was located.  They started with questions such as these:

• Is your state east of the Mississippi River?
• Is your state one of the original 13 colonies?
• Does your state border an ocean?
• Does your state border another country?
• Does your state's name start with a vowel?

They were quickly able to narrow down their guess down to two states.  They had to use a lot of problem solving skills and rely on things they knew about history, geography, and map skills.  The other class asked us some questions they we haven't heard before, such as:

• Does your state flag have a star in it?
• Does your state have a coast line?
• Does your state border the Gulf of Mexico?
• Does the Rio Grande run through your state?

They were also able to figure out that we were in Alabama!

Our 1st graders did a similar activity with a class in New York.  Their mission was to use problem solving skills discover a mystery number.  Using numbers 1-30, they eliminated possibilities with questions like this:

• Is your number even?
• Does your number have two digits?
• Is your number greater than ____?

These seem like simple questions, but they are really important skills for first graders!  They need to understand these concepts before they go on to add, subtract, and solve problems.  Here is a picture from the class in New York at Todd School while they were playing the game with us.

App of the Week: Skitch

A couple weeks ago I showed you how to use an image search to save pictures from the Web onto your iPad.  Today I'm going to take it a step further and show you one of the many apps you can use to annotate your photos. 

Skitch is a very simple annotating app.   It will allow you to highlight, draw arrows, type, add shapes, etc.  You can import your photos from your camera roll or you can use the camera. 

In this example, I used the same plant picture I saved in my previous post, and simply labeled the parts of the plant.  Then I saved it to my camera roll and through my Dropbox app (see previous post), it magically appeared on my computer.   How much more exciting would it be to let the kids photograph a REAL plant and label it?    This is something even the youngest students can do.

I envision using this in several subject areas.  How about saving a poem or passage (or let them take a picture of it) and have them highlight the rhyming words?  You could do the same thing with graphic organizers you are working with in class. 

Big kids can find and save their own photos or take them with the camera.  Little kids can use pictures that you pre-save to your camera roll for them.

I think this will be an app you will really love!