First graders at Laburnum Elementary have been learning about ordinal numbers (SOL1.3). Today, students in Ms. Leibowitz’s class identified the ordinal numbers of objects in a drawing they created. First, we helped the students log into the computers, since they haven’t had much experience with them. Then we went to Kleki, a free drawing site I like because it’s simple to access and use. We started off just scribbling in order to practice using the click and drag technique. This, in itself, is a challenge for young students developing their fine motor skills. Once they got the hang of it, I showed them the Undo button, and we undid all the scribbles. Now it was time to start drawing pictures. I demonstrated how they could change colors using the rainbow. They could draw anything they wanted, as long as the objects were in a row, since we would be identifying their ordinal positions. Some first graders get very concerned if their pictures are not perfect, so I let them know that their pictures could be messy (I did a few messy examples). Even a squiggle could be a snake or a worm. Their drawings could be simple (circles, squares, triangles), or, if they wanted a challenge, they could make them more complex (trees, houses, cars), by combining shapes together. But, I explained, the most important thing was for them to enjoy the process. As they finished, I went around and saved their work (File > Export Image). I also uploaded the pictures to a shared Google doc, accessed with a link shortener so I could navigate to it quickly from each student’s computer. Finally, once all the students’ artwork was uploaded, we looked at the pictures and identified the ordinal position of different objects. For example, what is the position of the flower? What is in third place? You can see their pictures here. UPDATE: I have used Kleki to teach lessons in other first grade classes for shapes (SOL1.11a) Ms. Spencer & Ms. Milteer and patterns (SOL1.14) Ms. Sunseri & Ms. Burnett.
