Today the #TechTakeout crew headed over to Montrose Elementary to work on language arts! Mrs. Hues, the ITRT at Montrose, met with the Title I Reading Teacher, Kathy Rohr, to find the grade level and topic with the greatest need. The winners of the #TechTakeout party were 3rd grade! We came in to focus on different activities that the students could do during stations. So many teachers are looking for ways to spice up their word study stations, and that’s where the #TechTakeout crew comes in! We shared four different station ideas and tools that the students will be able to use independently after today.
We opened the day with an awesome Nearpod activity that Mrs. Hues created. Montrose, was just awarded a HEF grant for Nearpod licenses and iPads, so we were eager to learn more about the full possibilities of Nearpod.
This is an awesome interactive tool that allows teachers to completely engage their students in every lesson using a variety of teaching tools. If you Google “What is Nearpod”, here’s how they describe what Nearpod is: “Nearpod is an interactive presentation and assessment tool that can be used to amazing effect in the classroom. The app’s concept is simple. A teacher can create presentations that can contain Quizzes, Polls, Videos, Images, Drawing-Boards, Web Content and so on.”
Mrs. Hues and Mrs. Green had the students work on word sorts using Promethean flipcharts on their own computers and on the Promethean board. They used the word sorts that they downloaded from this site. When they were done sorting the words, they used the sound recorder to record themselves saying the words and why they are in each sort. The students did a great job with this activity and were rewarded with a fun game! Scrabble Slam is a popular card game, but the students today played it on the Promethean board. They challenged each other to make words using the tiles, but they had to follow the word feature that they are studying. The students loved trying to make the most valuable word by adding up the value of each letter to determine the total value of the word.
Download and listen to this awesome student work sample:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BypuHmzzBVM7eHNPSVhydlpuTXc
Ms. Browne and Ms. Wright used Tumblebooks and Padlet with their groups. They focused on CVC and CVCe word patterns. First, the students listened to a pre-selected story called Toopy and Binoo: Toopy’s Story by Dominique Jolin on Tumblebooks. Afterwards, they opened a Padlet wall and typed words they found in the story that fit the word patterns mentioned above. This activity challenged their brains since they had to find all of the words themselves within the text.
Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Robinson used a new tool, Board Thing, with their groups. Students all jumped on the same collaborative board and added their word study words to this digital bulletin board. When the students clicked on the link for their board they didn’t sign in but clicked on the “sign in as guest” button. This allowed them to enter their name and join the board as a guest. Once on the board, the students each added a post-it with their name on it. Board Thing allows you to make each post-it a specific color. Each child picked a color and added their name at the top of the board. Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Smith added the headings that matched their word study words from this past week. Students then raced to see how many words they could add under each heading. We could see who was typing what words because of the colors they had picked. Once we added as many words as we could think of we went to Britannica Image Quest and found pictures to go with our words. The students uploaded their images to a new post it. We even discovered that if you drug your picture over your text post-it, it linked them together as one post-it. If time allowed we used the chat feature in the bottom right hand corner to write sentences using our word study words. Check out one of our boards from today:
Mr. Covais and Mr. Caratachea worked with Britannica Image Quest in tandem with Windows Movie Maker. First, the students used Clever to get to One Search. One Search is a great hub that we use in Henrico County for the students. Today we used it to get to Image Quest. The students chose some of their word study words and found images that represented those words. The students then saved the images to their desktop so they could easily be imported into Windows Movie Maker. Once the pictures were imported into Movie Maker, the students added a title. Each student added the pictures of their first word and then we added a title where the students typed their word study word. When the students shared out what they did they turned it into a game with their classmates trying to guess what their words were.
