Studying Heat

In Summer Enrichment, we have been melting a bunch of stuff. My favorite lesson was crayon art. We peeled crayons, cut them, glued them to card stock, and started to melt them using a hair dryer. The students had made a design on their card stock with painter's tape. It was so much fun. Here is an example of the crayon art:

The next day, the students made an iMovie about sources of heat. We had studied the sun, fire and the hair dryer. It was amazing to see their brains trying to find other sources of heat. 

Here is one of the iMovies that a group of students made:

Daily 5 with iPads

This year, I started using Daily 5 in my classroom. It has really improved my students' literacy and guaranteed reading time for all students. Before, I used to do the typical learning centers in which students were occupied with a writing, craft, or drawing task; very few days did I get to meet with all my students to give them reading time on a daily basis. With the daily 5, everybody has to read everyday. Furthermore by glancing at the students, I can tell which ones are reading independently with success and which ones need more instruction.

One of the components of Daily 5 is read to a buddy. I have not been brave enough to try this in my classroom. Instead, I designed a way that the students could read to their iPad as a component. I use an app called Tell a Story. The procedures for this activity are the following: first students pick a book, second students take a picture of the book, third, they import the picture of the cover to the app, then they hit the record button and read their book to the iPad. Using Tell a Story helps the students keep track of the book they have read, listen to the way they are reading (there is a playback feature) and see their reading improvement.

I love using iPads to ensure student success. If they are used for education purposes, they can make a difference in children's learning.

Dabbling in PBL

This week my class started a PBL.
We have been collaborating to chose an animal for our classroom to study.
I told my kids that our principal wanted us to pick an animal so we have been trying to decide on the animal for the past few days.
Yesterday, we narrowed it down between a turtle and a rabbit. To decide, the class voted anonymously by placing a magnetic unifix cube in either the turtle box or the rabbit box; then we decided to make the cubes into a graph. Students then had to tell our principal about their choice by describing our graph. This was the most meaningful work I have ever seen some of the students do. Here is an example of their work:
http://www.showme.com/sh/?h=lPzLj04
We used the app "show me" to describe the graph. First, the kids used their iPads to photograph the graph on the white board, then they had to manipulate the graph and record the meaning of it while asking for their rabbit.
I am loving the app show me; it's a wonderful tool to use in the math classroom.
It gives students confidence because they can vocally express themselves, then listen to their recordings to hear how they sound, they learn to recognize if their diction makes sense.
My goal for next week is to explore using it during writing and
reading. I believe it may be very powerful to sound out words while writing them.

Kindergarten students can use iMovie

One of the apps I want to talk about today is iMovie.
I thought iMovie would be extremely complicated for kindergarten students and that it was way expensive to get. However, I have proven myself wrong. Kindergarten students can use iMovie successfully and it teaches them so much about organization; it is worth the money.
When I began introducing the iPad app iMovie, I began in small groups of 6 students. We would take turns adding pictures and tapping on the microphone to record our voices. I also worked on iMovie whole group so students would get to experience using all its features. By 2 weeks, the majority of students in my class can use iMovie to create their own projects.
This week we worked on creating sets of 11 objects. My lesson took two days. The first day, we collected sets of 11 of the same objects in plastic bags. Students could put anything they could get their hands on in the bag, the only rule was that they had to have 11 of the same thing and it had to fit in the sandwich sized bag. They had 10 minutes to collect their objects. They were working in groups and it was very interesting to see them double check each other's work. They would advise each other to get one more or to take some away.
After the object collection, they had to display them on a white Work mat and then they had to get their iPads and take pictures of the ones they liked. They were so excited to have this freedom some had collected Leggo bricks, some brought counting bears, some brought toy airplanes. Taking their pictures concluded day one of the lesson.
On the second day, they had to practice writing the number 11 on doodle buddy; they also had to create a title page using the afore-mentioned app and save it to their photo album.
Then it was time to make the movie. They had to import their pictures into iMovie and record their own voices with their findings. The first picture was their title page and the rest of the pictures were the pictures from the previous day of sets of 11 objects. They enjoyed narrating their pictures.
The majority of the students were successful. I then took their movies and uploaded them to my YouTube channel. When we work on other numbers this will be great background knowledge.
Next week, I plan to keep using iMovie. I want all of my students to learn to use it successfully.

Word Wall Lessons on the iPad

One of the initiatives our team has taken extremely seriously this school year is the "word work" from the word wall.
I always have had a hard time incorporating this into my day. We also do a lot of "making words" lessons and I had found it difficult to keep my students engaged.

Last week I began using an app called ABC Magnetic Letters. It worked wonders. My students were able to sit close to the word wall with their iPads on their laps as they worked on the words on the wall. They weren't worried about their handwriting because the letters are in rows at the bottom of the app. They could just grab them and build words like they would at the magnet center. Except that they can all do it at the same time. Differentiating happens with the words they chose to build.

The word making lesson had always been hard because the students usually had to keep track of paper letters and they were easy to lose and dull to manipulate; with the app, everybody can make the words at the same time. I really enjoy using this app and students benefit from the letters being readily accessible.

Oh the wonders of having iPads!

My favorite apps for kindergarten students

Here are some images of apps that I have downloaded to my student iPads.
When searching for them, sometimes their name isn't actually what it says under the icon so the search has to be a little broad. I am uploading this pictures because in my last blog I mentioned the 1st crossword app and story buddy lite.

I believe these apps are great for kids even for the home. Although the ones that require creativity require a lot of adult guidance in the beginning, then kids will take off with their imaginations and create their own digital books.

It's amazing to see how fast they learn to use the more complicated apps.

Apps my students like

This week we have been working hard to learn to use our iPads with our curriculum
I have found ways to incorporate the iPads to create books, work on word building and math skills.

Two apps I want to mention are
Story buddy lite
1st Word Builder


We have been using story buddy to make writers workshop books and math counting books
Yesterday, we used story buddy to make mitten counting pattern books. The lesson included the kids looking for mittens, taking pictures of each other wearing the mittens, importing them into story buddy then adding words and numbers. The librarian and our school technologists each took a group of students since it was the first time we used story buddy. Today, the kids didn't need a lot of help in their operations; they did need help coming up with ideas. Our assignment was to make a digital book about how to dress in winter. They had to collect mittens, hats, boots, coats, try them on, photograph each other wearing them and them make a digital book on how to dress. They loved it and all the students were participating and 100% engaged the whole time. For this project, they were working in buddies (groups of 2 or 3).


The 1st word builder app we used during a language arts lesson was a great review for students to master letter names. This app can be used in various languages. Today we used the Spanish version of it. The negative aspect of the app was that it crashed on the kids who were having difficulty finding where to place their letters.

My goal  for this week is have kids who are experts at making digital books!
I finally downloaded pages app and it is very similar to story buddy lite.
My kids will be learning while using this tool next week.