Hello October! September is somewhat of a blur in my mind, we had a few technical difficulties here and there but I would say the first month of school has been a success! These first 4 weeks of school have flown by haven’t they? I’ve been a little slack in my blogging so I figured now was a good time to update everyone on some awesome things that took place in September!
Over the past few weeks I’ve spent time in all four kindergarten classes at Echo Lake. These teachers found out that the Seesaw app was now approved based on Terms of Service and they have certainly hit the ground running with it! For our lesson we decided to introduce the kids to Chatterpix. This is a fun, easy to use app that they use often throughout the year. We had the kids take a selfie, draw their mouth and then record themselves counting as high as they could during their 30 seconds of recording. We bedazzled with stickers and then saved to our camera roll. After our Chatterpix was saved we opened the Seesaw app and sent our projects to their teachers. This app makes it super easy to send finished projects to our teachers! If you are a K-1 teacher this app is for you!! What an awesome way to collect samples of your students work!
The first grade teachers at Johnson Elementary jumped right in and collaborated with me on a Google Slides project. We worked together as a class to play a game called “Find Someone Who.” We projected our slideshow on the big screen. We flashed up prompts like “I’ve been to Disney” or “I went to the beach this summer”. If students could answer yes to these questions they took a group picture and then uploaded it to the Google Slideshow. The kids were amazed at how they could take a picture on the iPad and make it appear on the Google Slideshow! Check out one of our finished projects!
Ms. English, a first grade teacher at FOES, invited me in to help her introduce her kids to Nearpod. She used an awesome “Shapes All Around Us” Nearpod to review concepts she had covered with her kids. It went so well I showed the same lesson to small groups in Mrs. Meier’s class at Johnson. If you aren’t familiar with Nearpod let’s collaborate! Don’t forget to check out this awesome resource created by the ITRT’s, it has ready to go Nearpods for you to use!!
Of course I’ve also had lots of log in lessons, Google Drive intros and a few digital citizenship lessons. I’ve even gotten a few classes signed up to use Google Classroom! If we haven’t had a chance to collaborate let’s make it happen this year! Excited for all October has to offer! Good luck as we enter month two!
