Innovate with iPad is Available on Amazon Today!

I am giddy with excitement that Karen and I's book is launching on Amazon today!  This book has been a labour of love for Karen and I since last year and we are so proud of the completed project.  This book has a complete selection of clearly laid out engaging open-ended lessons in math, literacy. social studies, science and self assessment.  We have chosen a handful of apps that are used for every lesson so you don't have to download dozens of apps onto your iPads.  Another wonderful thing about our book is that WE are teachers just like you and we know that your time is precious.  

Each page is a laid out lesson plan with the majority of them having a finished picture of the project, a link for a task card that can be printed for your students to use (you get the password in the book to unlock all of the task cards at www.innovatewithipad.com) and or a live student sample.  So busy teachers can open to the table of contents, find an idea and run with it.  

Whether you have access to one iPad for your entire class or one for each student, these lessons will help you transform learning in your classroom.  If you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave a comment, email me or send me a tweet @mrswideen

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Need an Authentic Audience for Math? Use Twitter

For the past couple of weeks my 2nd graders have been learning about data management.  This past week they have learned about collecting data through surveys, how to create bar graphs and how to analyze the data they have received.  For their culminating activity I asked them to create a question about "favorites."  Once they had their question, I had them tweet it out on our classroom Twitter account (@mrswideensclass).  I then retweeted the questions on my professional Twitter account to try to get enough responses for them to collect their data.  After two days, we had about 10 questions that had a sufficient amount of responses.  The next step was for the children to find their questions on twitter and tally the results.

After the student tallied the responses they created a bar graph to show the data.  I then had the students take pictures of their work and had them use Pic Collage to show their work.  We did this because we try to respond to everyone that has responded to our class on Twitter.  My class wanted to share their results with the people that answered their survey.  After my students created an image in Pic Collage they saved it to the camera roll and responded to everyone that took their survey with the picture of the results and a quick message.

First, I want to thank our PLN for responding to the questions.  The children were so excited to see all of the results.  What a fantastic and different way to collect surveys that are real and authentic.  It is also a fantastic piece of assessment that my students enjoyed, were engaged and eager to complete. 

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Students Show their Thinking with the Drawing Pad App

Today in our quest to find more out about habitats.  We discussed that there are different types of habitats.  I thought we would get through all of the habitats in one literacy block.  Boy was I wrong!  

We first went over our first essential question which is:
What is a habitat?
Students were able to articulate that it is where an animal lives and that a habitat needs 4 things for animals to survive:

1. Food
2. Water
3. Shelter
4. Space

I then introduced the students to the idea that there are different habitats and different sets of animals live in each habitat. We talked about the five major habitats, e.g. arctic, desert, ocean (coral reef or tide pool), rainforest, and savanna.

I then wrote the following questions on the board:

1. What types of animals live in the arctic habitat?
2. What kinds of plants?
3. What colours do you see?
4. What does the landscape look like?

Ultimately, I wanted students to understand that each habitat contains certain characteristics.

I then handed out the iPads and told my students that they could draw and annotate a picture of an arctic habitat with the information they learn from the video clip I was going to show them.  I then showed a video from brainpopjr about arctic habitats.  We actually watched it twice, once to watch it, then I played it a second time as they finished their pictures.  When they were finished their picture, they saved it to the camera roll and  published it to their blogs.   

Here are two examples:

Due to how long this activity took, my teaching partner and I have decided to break the kids into groups and give each group a different habitat to learn about tomorrow.  (brainpopjr has 6 different habitat videos)  We will then have the groups create something to show their learning on the habitat they research and share it with the class.

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The Primary Paperless Classroom

A new school year brings new aspirations, my hope this year is to become a paperless classroom.  Well, not completely paperless.  Let's face it, in a primary classroom, children need manipulatives and they need tactile stimulation.  However, I want to use less paper in my room.  Students can record their learning in many different ways other than pencil and paper.  Last year, my students showed me many different ways they could record their learning.  A few of my favorites were:  wallwisher.com as a substitute for sticky notes.  It's a great tool for brainstorming or for showing learning.  Another favourite  is the Show Me app where students can draw and record themselves explaining their learning.  One of my new favourites for recording student learning is Creating movies with the iMovie app.
These are all great tools, but I wanted to try something new, I wanted to take it one step farther and have my students use the iPads like notebooks.  I wanted to be able to share worksheets, documents and assignments with my students through the iPads.
Many classrooms are paperless classrooms, however when I searched for primary paperless classrooms, mainly grade one and two classrooms, I couldn't find any.  It is difficult to find primary paperless classrooms because for the most part, many or all of these children do not have email addresses to share documents.
I searched and searched for a way to make this a reality.  I asked my PLN for help, unfortunately I came up empty handed.  Until, I put my husband @MrWideen on the case.  It didn't take him long to figure out a way to send out documents to my grade 1/2 students' iPads without them having email addresses and it being easy enough for 20 six and seven years to accomplish with a little practice.  Stay tuned for my next blog post to see how we did it.

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