My Internship is Over :(

Hello! I have completed my student internship, and it took all my time so I have not been able to post for quite a bit. In one word, my internship was FANTABULOUS (a word from one of my 6th graders) 🙂 . I began my first 9 weeks in a 6th grade classroom, and I was extremely nervous! I thought 6th graders would be tough and my classroom management was not up to par. I mean they were all going to be taller than me, why would they listen? It turns out my classroom management was just what they needed. We had fun, but they respected me as their teacher. I taught them science, math, reading, and writing. We made models of the sun, earth, and moon. We used those models to show eclipses and seasons. We used Oreos to model the phases of the moon. Of course they got to eat the Oreos, so that made me an AWESOME teacher. In writing, we worked on persuasive writing. They were eager to share their opinions and back them up with reasonable evidence. For reading, we used daily five and this was a new program for me. The students used different skills in different centers. This worked perfectly with the 6th graders because they got to choose the centers they went to, and it created a sense of independence. In math, we worked with number lines, negative numbers, and absolute value. We used card games and fun assessments. Overall, 6th grade was amazing and I had a blast,

The second 9 weeks I moved to the Special Education room to work with students in 2nd and 3rd grade. We used centers to work with students one on one. Programs such as Read Naturally, Reading Works, Saxon Math, and Words Their Way were used to work on skills the students needed improvement on. iPad apps Core5 and Math Reflex were used for practice. I learned all about IEP’s and SIT meetings. We used different assessments to determine the level of each student. We created behavior plans and reward systems for students to improve their behaviors. It was fantastic to see how much work and dedication the teachers in a Special Education room put forth to getting each student back into their general education. There is no limit to what they would do.

My internship is over and I am extremely sad to say goodbye to all the students I met and worked with. The faculty and staff were all eager to help and they had a bond that I will never forget.

BRING ON MY FUTURE AND MY OWN CLASSROOM, I COULD NOT BE MORE EXCITED!! (maybe a little nervous)

2nd Grade Landforms

Last semester I had a great experience with my Block B practicum. I was assigned a 2nd grade classroom and I do not think I could have had a better placement. This was the first opportunity I was given to teach in front of a class completely on my own. I was nervous, and I mean extremely nervous. I was not sure if I could handle it, and although I had prepared for weeks, I thought the students were going to laugh and take me as a joke. I was to prepare a lesson on landforms and bodies of water that was going to be used as a review and a final assessment of their landform unit before they were moving on to directions and topography. We started off reviewing landforms with body movements and pictures. After I was sure they understood the different landforms, we used Magic Model Clay, markers, and paper plates to create 3 landforms they knew. This project was so fun! I could see from each student that they were engaged and that they truly understood what characteristics belonged to the different landforms. Some students added rivers and lakes with markers. I am sad to say that the iPad that I did take pictures with did not backup properly and I have lost all the photos. If I ever get my own second grade class I would use this lesson again in a heart beat. After this lesson was so successful, I made some adaptions and used it in my unit plan. This experience was just another piece of proof that I am meant to be an elementary school teacher. I am so excited for my future!

Below I have attached my Landform Unit Plan for a 2nd Grade class. This was my first attempt so there may be some changes, modifications, and adaptations to be used in a classroom, but I hope you enjoy!

Landform Unit Plan!!!

Using Apps in the Classroom; iTunes U Course

If using the iTunes U app there are multiple courses and lesson ideas that are available for educators, students, and anyone else who wants to use them. To get to the ideas for using apps in the classroom you want to open the iTunes U app and click on the link for educators. Under this category there is a section titled “Using Apps in the Classroom” and there are 18 books that you can download into your iBooks to use as a resource. The three that I really enjoyed looking at were Hopscotch Lesson Ideas, Skitch Lesson Ideas, and Scoodle Jam Lesson Ideas.

In this particular book it provides multiple activities to use in the classroom with a single app. It includes multiple subjects to use it in as well. Scoodle Jam is an interactive whiteboard app that is found in the app store for $3.99 and has limitless amount of uses for students. Some examples and ideas that this book recommends is in language arts they could use the postcard template to practice writing and have virtual pen pals, in math they can use the graph paper template and graph on a coordinate plane, in social studies you can use it like 20 questions and the board game Guess Who and have the students ask 20 questions to each other to guess the historical person they chose, and for science you can use the cause and effect graphic organizer and make an earth rock cycle collaboration. This book includes a couple other activities for older grades that you could also use it for. This app is an interactive whiteboard, but what makes it cool is you can sync it with other iPads to make these activities easy to turn into interactive lessons and they can collaborate and work together from their own iPad. This app has potential in the classroom and can be used in so many different ways and subjects in the classroom.

Scoodle Jam: $3.99

Inspiring Ideas for Teachers; iTunes U Course

Today I used an amazing resource called iTunes U. This is an app that provides courses and lesson ideas for teachers and students. It also has materials for college students and other resources. I went on this app and clicked on the link For Educators where I found a section for Inspiring Lesson Plans. There are 30 courses in this section and 4 that caught my eye were Students as Math Authors Project, Endangered Animals Writing Project, Learn Pythagorean Theorem Through Exploration, and Weaving Your Web With “Charlotte’s Web“.

In this course it provided engaging and interactive lesson ideas in language arts surrounding the book Charlotte’s Web. They are activities that work through the book looking for themes, exploring friendships, and finally spinning their own web. It begins with three activities to be used to introduce the students to the book. The first activity is using an app to create an interactive whiteboard about life on a farm. They will also use an interactive whiteboard to create a T-chart about spiders being friends and enemies. Lastly, they will also use a word cloud app to create a word cloud with words that describe friendship. When they begin to move to understanding Charlotte’s Web they move to two resources they provide and one activity. The two resources are book on audio and a recommended reading schedule. The activity is summarizing the chapters on the interactive whiteboard. In the book the spider Charlotte helps save the pigs life and for the classroom this course has them weaving a web to help someone they would like to help. They are required to use one of 6 possible apps to create a campaign to bring attention to the one they want to help. They will then post these on the web to get them out there and try and be successful in helping that person. I liked this idea because the children are using technology, using their own thoughts and creativity, and they are also helping someone in the end. I think it could engage the majority of the kids and is a more interesting way to read a book. I think this approach could be used with other books as well. To use it in my classroom I could find the themes of the book and come up with activities they can complete to go along with them. In the end there will be a larger project that can reach out and help the students grow and fully understand the main theme of the book.

CKV; Brown Vs. Board of Education | Topeka, KS

This week I created a video explaining the Brown Vs. Board of Education case and the impact it had. Being a future educator in a state I am not from I found it interesting to explore such an important court ruling in my field. To make this video I made a visit to the Historical site located in Topeka, KS and witnessed some pictures and objects that really drew a picture of this event. This case impacted the entire United States, but it is a crucial part of Topeka, KS history where Oliver Brown joined other parents in a lawsuit against the segregation laws of the schools. I chose this topic because until I moved to Kansas I was oblivious about this case and had no idea what had happened and I took it upon myself to do some research and learn what happened.

I made this video with the app iMovie and it was a lot more simple than I expected. When beginning a movie it can be overwhelming and I did have a hard time getting started. I did try an app called Voice Record Pro which was free, but I found it easier to just record right onto iMovie. Once I started to get an idea of what I wanted to include in my video iMovie made it simple to just add pictures, record voice over and music to the pictures, and line it all up. I was required to stretch-out some pictures and record what I wanted to say several times to get it how I wanted it. I also used another free app Haiku Deck to put some of the slides with text into the video. Haiku Deck is also simple to use, but I think it could be improved by adding some more customizing tools. For what I needed it for though it worked just fine.

In a classroom, students could use iMovie and a combination of other apps and resources to create a movie in many different subjects. In reading they could use it for a book report or sequel. In science they could go over a unit and what they learned or they could make a video of them conducting an experiment. History could be used to cover an event, era, or a person. Math they could create a song or scenario that uses an equation or act out a word problem. A plus about iMovie is there isn’t a time limit and they can create a movie of any length. I would recommend it to teachers for the classroom and anyone else who has access to an iPad.

iMovie: $4.99

Voice Record Pro: Free

Haiku Deck: Free

Week 7 Reflection: Teacher Tech

For this week I explored the blog of Alice Keeler titled Teacher Tech. What really caught my eye about this blog is how organized and easy to look around was. She had tons of advice on how to use technology in the classroom. One page that I really enjoyed and gave me an idea for my future classroom was titled Google Classroom: Save Student Work. In this post she mentions that using google docs in the classroom and allowing students to submit work and then do them. By this she means they can open a google doc and include the teacher in it. Then they can began working on it while the teacher is able to give formative feedback and assessment while the students works. You can see when and where edits were made to see the steps they took to get to their end result. Google Docs also has the ability to to save all the work in a folder organized on the computer which sounds a lot more handy and organized than piles of paper homework! I will definitely be saving this blog for later use and advice!

Digital Storytelling with Adobe Slate

Today I gave digital storytelling a shot and it was easier than I thought it would be. I explored a few different apps to make one and the one that was the easiest to use and had the most interesting end product in my opinion was Adobe Slate. Below is my digital story I made as an example of what students could easily make about any topic or subject.

What stood out to me about this app compared to the other ones was the simple scrolling technique using pictures and text. Some other options are Adobe Voice, which would be cool if you wanted your story to be more of a short video. Storehouse is really cool too. It is set up similar to Adobe Slate where you scroll down to continue the story, but you use a combination of text, pictures, and videos. The last app I explored was Animoto which did not give any examples to really see its potential, but the short video I made was simple and you add pictures, videos, text, and music. With a little more experience this app might have potential to make really cool videos. I chose to use Slate because it looked simple and still had a very professional end product. It walks you through the process on how to use it and you can have a different layout and style to meet your needs. I believe in a classroom students would be very excited to make a a digital story with Slate about an interest of theirs or a topic in class. They could add photos with text in-between and along with those photos. It would be a very unique way for the students to express themselves and show the teacher what they know. It could be used in any subject. The teacher could also use Adobe Slate to present new information to the students. Vocabulary words can be paired with a picture to help the students scroll through and review them. Overall I believe this app could be a useful resource in any classroom of any age. The best part is it is FREE!! Who doesn’t love free stuff for their lessons!

Adobe Slate: Free

Week 6 Reflection: Blogs-by-the-Sea

This week I discovered a blog titled Blogs-by-the-Sea which is a blog where a teacher posts blogging challenges to give students ideas for their weekly posts. On this post the teacher has links to all the students individual blogs. After reading a few of the student blogs I was really surprised on the ways they were using their blogs. On one titled Tally the Trash the students were encouraging other students to recycle and pick up trash by posting tally sheets on trash cans and having people make a tally every time they recycle or pick up trash. Another blog titled My World My Writing the student writes chapters to stories and little excerpts. She also writes simple posts of what she is excited for and encourages people to respond on her posts.

The picture above is off the blog My World My Writing and it is titled Ice Cream Social. It is just an example of how creative these kids are being within their blogs. They are expressing themselves completely and this is inspiring. It encourages me to use a blog within my own classroom to foster the creativity and also to work on their writing. It can improve spelling, reading, and writing skills all at once. The only thing I would like to see on Blogs-by-the-Sea would be maybe a little more back story or information about his blog challenges.

Interactive Whiteboards & Screencasting, My first Screencast!

Above is the interactive whiteboard I created titled Butterfly Life Cycles using the app Educreations. This app was free although there is a paid version for $11.99 a month which I think is a little high for an interactive whiteboard app. The free version is fairly simple to use. You can add a photo, a background, and change the type of paper it looks like. This could be convenient in math by using the graph paper for graphing or geometry. A couple downfalls about the free version is you cannot save it to your iPad and you also can only have one project at a time. Another issue that was quite frustrating was that if I made a mistake with the recording portion I had to start completely over because it would not let me start the recording over. Luckily it did not take me many tries to complete it. In a classroom the paid version could be beneficial by having students create a interactive whiteboard project on a topic they were passionate about and presenting it to the class. It could also be a way for the teacher to present new information. I just wish the free version either had more options or the paid version wasn’t so much.

Educreations: Free

Week 5 Reflection: Tech Edge in the Classroom

Today I watched several videos on the Tech Edge youtube channel and I learned about plenty of apps for iPads that are beneficial and convenient to use in the classroom. In episode 87 they discuss apps that are helpful with emergent literacy. Within this video I found out there are apps that help with letter recognition, writing letters, sounds of letters, and even what your mouth should look like when saying the letter sound. One app that was interesting to me and seems like it would be interesting and helpful to students was the app called ABCs Alphabet Tracing by Kids Academy. In this app it went over the sound, showed an object that started with that letter, and has the students trace the letters. The first time they trace there is a guiding arrow and on the second one they do it all on their own. This could be helpful for all kids in the classroom and it could also be especially helpful for kids who may have dyslexia.

ABCs Alphabet Tracing by Kids Academy:

$2.99

Another video I thought shared some cool apps was episode 154 sight words and spelling apps. In this episode they discussed apps that can create spelling test, fun little games with sight words, and then my favorite Cimo Spelling. What I enjoy about Cimo Spelling is there are different categories and games you can play. It has cute penguins which I think will engage the kids. In the demonstration they show is the app gives you jumbled up letters and asks you to spell a word. Each letter is a chunk of ice and you use them to build a bridge for the penguin to walk across. If they spell the word wrong the penguin falls through that letter. Also after they have spelt the word right they not only read the word, it sounds out every letter individually. Over all I think the students would have fun with this app.

Cimo Spelling: Free

The third video that showed some cool apps was episode 157 Presentation Apps. This video demonstrated 2 presentation apps and my favorite of the 2 was a free app called 30 Hands. One of the coolest features of this app in my opinion that is different than other presentation apps is that not only can you use photos on your iPad you can search the internet for pictures and information inside of the app. It was also cool that you could write on the pictures using your finger. With this app I think the students could be really creative and make some awesome presentations.

30 Hands Starter: Free

This youtube channel has a ton of videos on all different apps to use in the classroom. Each one has multiple apps that they review and mention pros and cons. I will definitely have to bookmark it for later!

Mrs. Best-Thibault's Classroom

Learning Knows No Bounds