Mrs. Riddell’s 1st grade class at Glen Allen Elementary has been working on the reading skill, Making Predictions. Today we did a fun activity using the website, Epic, and the iPad app, Doodle Buddy.
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riginally Mrs. Riddell and I had planned on using a Tumblebook about snowmen. However, we couldn’t find any on Tumblebooks! Therefore, I looked into Epic, a free website for educators, and found the cutest story called Snow Party. Epic does not read the book aloud so we did the reading.
Half way through the book, the snowmen, women and children were preparing for their snow party and had a gift to open. We paused the read aloud right there:
Next, students launched Doodle Buddy on their iPads and selected the “crystal ball” (really it is a snow-globe) to be their background. I passed out some stylus pens and they went to town drawing what they predicted was in the snowman’s box inside of the crystal ball. Once finished, students saved their drawing to the camera roll and submitted their work through the Work Collector. We all gathered on the carpet and projected everyone’s work on the screen to share. There were some really clever predictions: ice cream cone, snow, scarf, hat, ice shoes, party supplies, snow cone…..
Check out their drawings:
We had the MOST fun revealing the answer at the end of the lesson. Before Mrs. Riddell and I continued reading the story, we explained that it is OKAY to be incorrect when making predictions…that is part of the fun!
Snow Party ends with the snowmen and women celebrating and opening the present which releases snow butterflies into the sky. Not one of us (even the adults!) had a prediction that was correct which made us all laugh hysterically! Snow butterflies? Reeeeally? Well, that is something we will never forget!
