New Resources for Junior Teachers

I have been working in a lot of Junior Classrooms lately and what I have noticed is that teachers need activities to reinforce what they are teaching in early phonics and handwriting. I have pulled together some of my existing updated resources and lots of new ones and added them to my TPT store. When looking up my name, filter to the most recent. Some of these activities are ideal to teach with in small groups, but most can be used for independent work. I hope these will be helpful. 

Store Link

Observation 'The Gardens' 12 March 2013

Evernote and Edmodo are being used by some of the teachers in this school. Tracy in particular has lead the movement amongst the e-Learning teachers with Edmodo. Most of her Year 5/6 class are in their second year of e-Learning and it shows. The students are very quick and adept with the technology.

Jan's Year 5/6 class has some boys that are 'blossoming' using iPads. They are more focussed, on task, engaged and interested in what they are doing. She had no problems setting up her room this year and feels very comfortable with the way it works. I noticed that the students were using the whiteboards for their learning rather than the teacher.

Jan wanted her students to practise their handwriting with Drawing apps on the iPad. The students mostly chose Drawing Pad. I suggested using Notability with lines and also suggested that they record themselves in Screen Chomp writing the alphabet so that they could see what letters they are not forming correctly. Once they had their practice in Notability, they could save into a Handwriting folder, their best pieces of writing could be shared to Evernote.
The last 2 years the e-Learning teachers have been using Google Sites for their digital portfolios. They have decided it was too cumbersome so they are using Evernote which can be used both on computers and devices. Most creative apps will share to Evernote, so students can store best evidence of their progress in notebooks in Evernote. Work that has been hand done can be photographed and added as well. Students can also use the recording option to record their feelings about their work.

During reading time students were creating their graphics in Drawing Pad based on their reading book Sea Witch. Once they made the individual pictures they added them to Comic Life.


 


One of Tracey's students showed me how to install the Evernote clipper to Safari on the iPad

• Go to http://mergy.org/2012/05/use-the-evernote-clipper-with-safari-on-ipad-and-iphone/ this has the instructions for the following
• In another tab go to http://www.evernote.com and bookmark it, rename it 'Evernote Clipper'
• Go to this link http://mergy.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/iOSEvernoteWebClipper.txt copy the code, tap on Bookmarks and Edit, tap on Evernote Clipper, paste code
• From now on when you select Bookmark - Evernote Clipper,  a new window will open where you can choose notebooks and tags
  

Formation of letters with Whiteboard Apps

I was talking to a junior teacher today about ShowMe and all the things she could do with it in Maths. She started thinking about how she could use it for letter formation practice. She lets the students practise on the Whiteboard but if she is not standing over them at the time, she doesn't see whether they are forming them correctly.
Some of the following 'Whiteboard' apps are ideal for students to practice their letter formation as they can record what they are doing and the teacher can view it later.

ShowMe (Free for the iPad)
Account: You need to set up an account to save recordings. Students can set up their own accounts if they are using their own iPad or you can set up a class accounts.
Preview before saving: No
Saving: Tap on the padlock to make a ShowMe private, otherwise it will get published to your public ShowMe account on showme.com
Example of ShowMe

Educreations Interactive Whiteboard (Free for iPad)
Account: You need to set up an account to save recordings. Students can set up their own accounts if they are using their own iPad or you can set up a class accounts.
Preview before saving: No
Saving: Tap Done, choose a category
Example of Educreations

Screen Chomp (Free for iPad)
Account: No account necessary but you can login with Facebook
Preview before saving: Yes
Saving: Tap on the screen chomp icon and it will save

In the classroom, I would probably find Screen Chomp at this particular time the best app to use if you do not want to save what the students have done. Students can record what they are doing and then playback to you without saving.

Tracing Activities

The Foundation font is a perfect font for our New Zealand Schools. Download it and use it to make Handwriting activities for your children.




One of the fonts is made of dots.
Make tracing activities for the children of the letters they need to practice.

One of my junior teachers that I work with finds Black and white images on Google Images and copies them onto her notebook software page.







Children use these as tracing activities, great for students who need to practise fine motor control.

Day 5 e-Learning Classroom

Part of good management of students and the creation of 'self-managing' students is the time it takes for them to become self managing and what management strategies, you...the teacher, have put in place.
As an issue arises then create a management strategy to take care of that problem. One came up yesterday, this school does not allow students to print from their computers, only the teacher laptop can print! Some of the children have publishing to print, others need to print out their drafts for conferencing and further editing. The teacher could end up being harassed by impatient students all day wanting their printing!

Solution: We will add a 'Ready to Print' option to the Writing management board. Students move their name labels to that part of the board. The teacher will find the saved file in the student's individual folders and can print all files at at time that is convenient.

We wanted all of the children to have some typing practice, so instead of handwriting sessions everyday, nine children would be allowed to go to the computers to practice their typing and do their spelling activities. The rest of the class would do their handwriting and spelling. We made a timetable that would run for the whole week. This will go on the wall so all students know when it is their turn to be on the computer during this time.

We used the 'easi speak' for a different purpose today. One of the students has a problem with writing things down, computers are difficult and so was the iPad. The main difficulty appears to be with spelling and writing/typing fluently. This child has very good verbal skills. She managed to write down her ideas and after she conferenced her work with the teacher rather then get her to go through the pressure of writing or typing again we got her to publish with the 'easi speak'. She did a perfect job in one 'take'. She was also the first person to publish in the class and had the biggest smile on her face when she was informed of this.

The 'easi speak' continues to be one of the most popular choices for reading. Students love using the microphone to record their voices speaking and even more so...hearing themselves back through the speakers.
The teacher will need to set up a timetable for this activity as some children were complaining that they haven't had a turn yet. Small whiteboards are great for 'booking' time and equipment and students are more likely to use them mainly for the novelty of using whiteboard markers!

Mobile Listening Post

I brought in an old iPod of mine that has audiobooks loaded on it. I have a few copies of Stormbreaker so I set that up as an reading option for students. Several students enjoyed listening to the story and reading the book at the same time. To manage this well, if there are students listening at different times then they will need to make a note of the time where the story is up to.
This is a great followup activity for students particularly if the group are reading the book as part of their instructional reading.
Teachers can make their own audiobooks of student basal readers, record them on GarageBand (Mac) or Audacity, then download to an iPod or MP3 player. Use a splitter so up to 5 headsets can listen at one time.

Another popular reading activity is 'Grab some friends and perform a play. The students also have to record what they are doing with a 'Flip Video' Camera (these are not in production anymore, so if you can find one, grab it as it has so many uses in the classroom). The benefits of students recording is

1.  it keeps all students on task
2. the play can be watched at any time by anybody
3. the performers can 'critique' their performance

In this photo is an interesting group with one girl and several boys with strong characters. From the beginning you could see that there were going to be 'co-operation' issues. From several observations I feel that the use of the camera kept them more on task then they normally would be, as they wanted to have a movie to show the rest of the class so got over their 'leadership' problems quickly. 

Collaboration

Even though these students are working 1-1 on these computers, they are still talking to each other, they are asking questions, providing answers and helping each other.
They are on swivel chairs that helps with the collaboration, they can move and turn to each other. When this photo was taken, the boy on the end had a problem and the two girls to his right were helping him.

Day 3 e-Learning in the Classroom

Maths
Students are working well through the activities, some of them need to be reminded that they have to record their scores from the online math activities. Children who were working on the mimio workshop are learning to be co-operative with each other so that they share ownership of the mimio pen!






Reading

The reading session went extremely well today. Students were moving from task to task independently.










We introduced two new options, the audiobook on the iPod touch and the Easi-speak microphone.
The students with the Easi-Speak had a great time recording themselves reading a story and listening to themselves reading it.

Students sat with the iPod  touch, the splitter and head phones and listened to 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' audiobook.

The children are also very fond of using the flip video to record their plays.












Writing

The students are getting into the swing of using the Writing task board. They were all moving their names across to the appropriate column. Some of the students started on the Conferencing options. At this school the students can't print from the school computers, only the teachers laptop is enabled to print so we are adding another management space to the Writing task board 'Ready to print' so that the teacher knows which students have work to print out, and can print it out at a time that is convenient to them.

Handwriting, Keyboarding and Spelling
The blending of these subjects is working well. Students know who are on the computers for Keyboarding and Spelling, while the others do their Handwriting and Spelling in their books. Keyboarding is already starting to improve.
Several children are confident with the Home keys (asdf jkl;) so I have started them off on the Keyboarding cards.

Handwriting, projectors and PowerPoint

I have prepared Handwriting examples for a class using the font Jarman. If you prepare all your handwriting lessons like this then you will always have them available. I have created them in PowerPoint. They can then be projected onto the screen for the children to copy out. Modelling how the letters are written can be done over the projection or on another whiteboard. I also like to have an individualised handwriting programme for my students so the separate PowerPoint slides can be printed out and laminated so you have class sets of the cards.