The students in Mrs. Lundy’s 1st grade class collected data and graphed it using Pixie. They began the lesson with a snack size bag of Skittles. The students had to open their bag and sort the Skittles by color. Next they used a tally sheet to record their data. Finally, they displayed their data in a Pixie graph using the paint bucket to fill the graph to the correct amount. Mrs. Lundy created the template and dropped it into her students folders on Volume 2 so they could edit using their own data. The teacher followed up by having the class analyze one of the student’s graphs.
Category Archives: 1st
Library Lesson using Document Camera & ActiVotes
Ms. King, the librarian at Glen Lea, did a fantastic job incorporating technology into her first grade lessons today. To engage the students, she read “A Sick Day for Amos McGee” using the Ken-A-Vision document camera to project the pages of the story. The students were excited to get such a great view of the story while Ms. King was reading. After the story, they answered comprehension questions that were created on Pixie. The students submitted their answers using the ActiVotes and the results were fantastic! You could tell that the students had payed really close attention to the book and were excited to share what they knew. Way to go Ms. King!
National Symbols Pixie Slide Show
The first grade students in Ms. Collier’s Class at Maybeury Elementary have been studying National Symbols. To reinforce their understanding, the students added a definition and recorded their voice on each slide. On the final slide, they had to match the word with the picture of the National Symbols. Check out this work sample of several students slides:
National Symbols from Karen Hues on Vimeo.
VoiceThread
One of my favorite Web 2.0 tools is VoiceThread! I have used it in several classrooms to get the students communicating about the things they are learning in class. The first step is to build avatars for your children so that their actual pictures are not out on the internet. There are several great sites for creating your avatar, such as buildyourwildself.com, or you can have your students draw themselves in Pixie. Then you can use these pictures to add identities on your page. You only have to create the identities once and they will be on your account forever, or until you delete them.
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| From Build Your Wild Self Avatar |
Next, the teacher uploads photos or videos to their VoiceThread project. Once the images are uploaded, you are able to share the link with your students so that they can hop on the computer and make comments. Comments can be typed or spoken. Both commenting options allow you to have a virtual pen, so you can draw on the page while you are talking or typing your comment. You can set their preferences so that all comments have to be approved by the teacher before they are posted. This is a really great way to get your students talking with their peers, other schools, other students in Virginia, students in other states, and students in other countries! The possibilities are endless.
Snow Day Writing in Pixie
The day after a snow day, the students can’t wait to tell you what they did on their day home from school. Why not let them all tell you at the same time? They can all share their stories by opening up Pixie on the laptops and typing away. The 1st grade students in Mrs. Locher’s class at Maybeury did just that after coming back to school from their snow day. We started by opening Pixie and selecting a text box. The students spent about half of the class period typing their stories about what they did on their snow day. We asked the students to try their best with spelling. This way their teacher can pull up their work later and use it for an editing station. Unlike Pages, Pixie allows the students to type their inventive spelling words without putting a red line underneath of the words. The red lines tend to throw the students off because they want it to be perfect. After the students had a good amount of typing done, I showed them how they could find pictures to add to their writing. We discussed how the illustrations needed to go along with the writing prompt. They found pictures that related to their story and added them to their document. Finally, we saved their work in their student folders so that they could go back later and continue adding text and pictures to their page. Here’s an example from one of her 1st graders:
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| From Snow Day Writing |
Review Using ActiVotes & QUIA
As the benchmark testing is quickly approaching, many teachers are asking for fun activities they can do with their kids to review. I really like the idea of using the ActiVotes because the students tend to be more engaged and excited about review whenever the ActiVotes are in the room. My students always loved using my Quia website too, so why not put the two together? In this review lesson, I projected the teachers Quia site with a rags to riches activity on 2nd Grade map skills. Rags to Riches is similar to “Who wants to be a millionaire” so they kids get excited that they are earning pretend money as they answer the questions correctly. You can also change the currency. In this activity, they were trying to win a million Skittles rather than dollars.
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| From QUIA Review Game |
All teachers in Henrico have access to a Quia site. Quia is a nice option for review because you can create your own activities with the specific questions that you want your students to know the answers to. You can also borrow activities from others if you find a great Quia activity that you like on other persons page. If you love their activity, but there is a question or two that you dislike, you can always edit the other persons work and make it fit your needs. If you would like help setting one up for your classroom, please sign up for a consultation.
States of Matter Videos and Sort in Pages
Looking for an activity on states of matter? It could be the first introduction for Kindergarten students, or a review for the upper grades, as this SOL is touched on in all grade levels. To create this activity, I went to United Streaming and search for states of matter for grades K-2. You can also search by the SOL number, which is a nice feature. Rather than downloading the entire 25 minute video, I just downloaded the segments that I needed…a video for solids, another for liquids, and one more for gasses. After successfully downloading to my desktop, I opened up a new Pages document simply pulled the video clip into my pages document. I re-sized the videos (just like you would a picture) to make it fit above the 3 columns. To play the video, the students click 2 times. To pause the video, click once. There is a remote control under the quick time tab in the inspector (blue circle with the i) that allows you to navigate through the movie. After watching each video, the students found the pictures of items that belong in that category, and moved them to the correct box. You can make the boxes with the shape tool. Just be sure to push the boxes to the background so that the pictures can be placed on top.
1st Grade Skip Counting/Graphing Lesson
Mrs. Lundy, a 1st grade teacher at Glen Lea, wanted to work on graphing with her students, but also wanted to incorporate the idea of skip counting by 2’s, 5’s, & 10’s. Pixie is a fantastic program for introducing the idea of graphing to the primary grades. By using the paint can, they can fill up the bar graph box by box until they have the correct number represented. As we dumped paint, we skip counted together. The students did a great job, and they learned that bar graphs don’t always count by 1’s. Sometimes the scale counts by 2’s, or 5’s, or even 10’s. Here are the graphs they completed:
After the students created each graph, we analyzed the graph for the favorite, least favorite, most, least, etc. There are so many uses for these graphs and they are so simple to create on Pixie. Sign up for a consult and I can show you how to make your own!
Thanksgiving Pixie Activities
In preparation for the Thanksgiving holiday, some of my Kindergarten and first grade classes have been completing these Pixie activities. In the first activity, the students delete one of the pilgrims, so that only a boy OR a girl pilgrim are left. Next, they take an oval shaped picture of their face and put it on the pilgrims face. Then I had the students complete the speech bubble “I am thankful for…” Finally, the students used the paint can and spray paint to add a fall scene in the background.
On the second activity, we discussed how the First Thanksgiving was a celebration of the harvest among the Pilgrims and Indians. Students searched through the clip art folders under the stickers tab to add foods to the table that would have been served at the Thanksgiving celebration of 1621. We discussed how some of the foods we eat today at Thanksgiving are much different than the foods that were available to people at the First Thanksgiving.
1st Graders Review Using Activotes
The 1st grade students in Mrs. Kowalczyk’s class at Baker did a fabulous job using the Activotes to review for an upcoming science test. She used a Rags to Riches activity on Quia to display the questions for her students. After hearing the question read aloud, students were able to select their answers using the Activotes. As they pressed the letter for the answer they wanted to select, they would see their number light up indicating that they had voted.
After all of the answers are submitted, a graph is automatically generated that shows how many students selected each of the answer choices (A-D in this case). Mrs. Kowalczyk used this as a wonderful opportunity to analyze graphs. After looking carefully and answering a few questions about the graph, she let the students had a discussion about what the correct answer should be.
This was a fantastic way to get her students actively engaged in the lesson and review the content at the same time. The great news is that the Activotes can be used in a classroom with or without the Promethean board. If you’re interested in learning how to use the Activotes, please sign up for an appointment today!