Today I was able to hang out in Mrs. Edelblut’s and Mrs. Hayes’ 1st grade classes at Seven Pines Elementary. Both classes have been working on their maps skills. They have been learning about symbols, map keys, the compass rose, and identifying the United States, Virginia, Richmond, and Washington DC on a map.
In steps ThingLink. ThingLink is a great way to label pictures with “tags.” You can add text to these tags, and you also have the option for the “tags” open a website, video, or anything that you can attach a website to. When you make a new Teacher account, you can also add students to your account, so they each get their own log in information.
When I first ran across Thinglink.com, I had the idea of using it to label Animal Adaptaptions:
Sadly, all my teachers were on other units in science, so I forgot about ThingLink. I was so excited when Mrs. Edelblut said they wanted to do something with identifying parts of a map. ThingLink immediately popped into my head because of the easy labeling and tagging features. The 1st graders did a great job labeling the map, and Emily and Logan went a step further writing sentences into their tags.
For a follow up lesson, we are going to have the kids complete a symbols activity like the one below.
