In “Innovate with iPad: Lessons to Transform Learning in the Classroom” primary teachers Karen Lirenman and Kristen Wideen provide a complete selection of clearly laid out engaging open-ended lessons to change the way you use iPad in the classroom.
In this grade two 3-D Geometry iTunes U Course, students will explore attributes of 3-D objects using concrete materials and drawings. Students will also build and construct 3-D objects and models as well as develop language to describe geometric concepts.
Discover how to keep parents informed, connect globally and link to your curriculum. This One Best Thing leads your primary classroom students through the creation of a learning network on Twitter.
This past year, I really
focused on explicitly teaching comprehension strategies to my students.I taught how to reread a text, annotate a
text, leaving tracks of thinking while reading, questioning techniques and
most importantly, instilling in my students that reading is thinking.
We used Padlet walls to show
our thinking, we drew pictures and wrote information digitally as I read aloud,
we used today’s meet to make our thinking visible.Using these different strategies kept my
students engaged and allowed their thinking to be seen by their peers and
myself.
Near the end of this past
year we began an inquiry on Africa.I find one of the most
challenging things about student inquiry is to find resources that are
interesting and at my students reading level.One resource I use often is readinga-z.Reading
a-z is a website that has more than 2,500
downloadable books (including English, Spanish, and French versions) and
thousands of teaching and learning materials.
I use to search for specific
topics and then match my students reading levels to the text.I would then print the various books out for
my students.This took a lot of time to print
and a lot of paper!I can usually find 2
or 3 different texts on the same topic in varying difficulty.
While I was searching for different
books on Africa, I noticed that the books could be downloaded in a PDF.This was a game changer.Having 32 iPads in my room, I was able to
save the book as a PDF and save it to Dropbox.My classroom iPads all have the Dropbox app, which means:
Students open the Explain Everything app
Choose open file and download the PDF to Explain Everything
The PDF opens in Explain Everything and now students can annotate, draw, highlight and record their voice right on the document.
They can also save their work and go back to it for research purposes and it is a great way for me to assess their comprehension strategies.
You could also use this same format to have your students show non fiction text features like the example below:
A few weeks ago, I did a workshop on Creating Authentic iPad
Learning Stations for Primary Students.I thought I would share some of the things that I spoke about and some
of the key points that I tried to get across in my workshop.
First, an iPad Station does not consist of handing a child
an iPad, putting them on an app and letting them click away.Come on people, aren’t we past this by
now?In the past, I have had colleagues
come ask me if they can use the iPads in my room the following period.When I replied yes, their next question was,
“What apps do you have on them?”WHAT!?
Integrating technology doesn’t mean that you hand a child an iPad for a period
because you have nothing planned.Using
technology needs to be purposeful.It
needs to be thought out, and there needs to a reason to use it.
Technology is used to give students a voice, give students
choice, to give students a global audience, to make thinking visible and to
allow me to assess and give feedback using voice and video.It also enables my parents to see their
children’s work on a daily basis through Twitter and their personal blogs.
When I first started creating my iPad task cards, I only had
2 iPads in my classroom.I originally
used them as a centre or station during my daily 5 or my math stations.I was able to put the task card along with an
iPad and voila! My students were able to all have a turn using the iPad for
something meaningful.All of my iPad
stations stem from the Ontario Curriculum.
Now that I have a cart of iPads, I still use the iPad
stations but, now many of the task cards are made for whole class activities
and are step by step instructions for students to follow to complete a task.
All of my iPad stations are content creation stations.Which means, that students use their
creativity and knowledge to produce something that shows their learning.Here are a few examples:
My second key point is that you only need one page of apps
for your students to be successful.I
too, have fallen into the free app downloading frenzy.What happens is you have so many apps for
your students to use that they never get comfortable using it and then have to
spend extra time learning the functions rather than concentrating on their work.If you have a handful of apps that your
students can use efficiently then they are not distracted by trying out a bunch
of new apps that probably aren’t as good as the ones I am going to suggest
anyways.
Here are the must have apps we use in my
classroom:
I like to use apps that you can use for different
purposes.We use two whiteboard apps in
my room.For young children or children
new to the iPad, Draw and Tell is where to start.For experienced iPad users (which is most
children) or children in grade 2 or higher I strongly suggest Explain
Everything.If you can only buy one app
for your iPads, make it EE.
Here is an example of one my iPad stations using EE:
And a student sample:
Another favourite app we use all of the time is Popplet:
We also use Pic Collage for many different applications:
Lastly, Geoboard is a great free app to use for math:
This year, I have used Padlet walls to assess work. Some of my students choose to use paper and pencil instead of the iPads to show their learning, with a quick picture of their work they can upload it to the Padlet wall and I can look at all of my students' work in one place from anywhere and see who is ready to move on or who needs to work with me the following day in a small group.
These are only a few examples of the iPad stations we use, please feel free to use any of the stations I have created. You can download and print them for free. At the top of the page where it says iPad Stations is where they are all stored. Enjoy!
I have many emails from teachers that are just starting to use iPads in their classrooms about what apps I would recommend. I have to admit that the apps I loved 3 years ago are the pretty much the same ones I would recommend today. I do need to stress that these apps alone without teacher direction and curriculum goals will not magically improve your test scores or your students writing levels. There is a lot of thought in the way that I incorporate technology into my classroom. My favourite apps aren't button pushing apps that help students memorize math facts or sight words. These are apps that if used properly show student thinking. They are apps that make assessing students knowledge and thinking very apparent. These are apps that allow my students freedom and creativity to show what they know.
So my disclaimer is that these are my favourite apps for my classroom. A classroom that offers a lot of choice and freedom to my students. A classroom that is noisy, messy and full of life. This may not be your kind of classroom. These may not be your kind of apps.
As I am wrapping up my geometry unit, I wanted to share some of my favourite activities I created for my kids to show their thinking. When I told them that we were starting a new unit next week they were upset because they had so much fun learning and showing their thinking during this unit. I hope you can find some of the following activities useful and fun!
As my students and I continue on our journey exploring coding in our classroom I wanted to find an app that would help my students build a foundation on how to code in a simple and creative way. I took a look at several apps and chose the Scratch Jr. App for several reasons:
It is free.
The app is a content creation app where students are able to create and express themselves, try new things, take risks and experiment.
Students that cannot read, can still use this app successfully.
There are some fabulous resources for teachers.
When I first opened the app, I wasn't really sure what to do, there are many buttons and options. I wanted to let my students "tinker" with it but I also wanted it to be purposeful and not too frustrating. I went to the Scratch Jr. website and clicked on the activities tab. It brought me to an introductory video that I shared with my students and 9 different activity cards that could be printed out or shown on a screen in your classroom ranging in difficulty.
One of the Scratch Jr. Activity Task Cards from their website
I loved how even my struggling readers could follow the simple instructions and that at the end of each task card was two challenges to try. Each of the nine activities demonstrates a different skill or action that children can do to create a program. I decided that I wanted my students to go through the nine task cards so they had a solid foundation of how to use the app and all of the options that were provided. I printed out all nine activity cards and created a checklist for my students to keep track of the activities they had completed.
My students were so excited for this activity. We worked on the activities for about forty minutes. Most students got two or three of the activity sheets done. We worked on the activities again today and my students are so excited to see all of the different things they can do with this app. They are already asking me when we are going to continue with the activities. I have other students that can't wait to code stories they have written during writer's workshop. I was thinking of eventually using the app to code number stories that the children have written in math. Instead of just reading their number story, they could code it! There are so many possibilities with this app, I can't wait to see what my students come up with!
It was our second lesson on coding without a
computer. If you would like to see our
first lesson check it out here.
Today, I
had the learning carpet (a square carpet with a grid on it) out in the middle
of the classroom.I told the students
that we were going to write a simple algorithm using the following language to move a stuffed whale to a predetermined spot on
the carpet using the following commands:
·FW
– forward
·BW
– backward
·LT90
– left turn 90 degrees
·RT
– right turn 90 degrees
We were then going to test the algorithm to see
if the program ran the way we intended it too and if it didn’t, we would debug
the algorithm.
We started very easy with only having to write
a few lines of code to get the whale where we wanted it to go.I then added little math counters as
obstacles so it wouldn’t be a straight shot from point A to point B.After doing this activity several times
together, it was time for them to try it on their own.We placed the whale on the carpet and then I
placed a pink sticky note to where I wanted the whale to end up.I also added the math manipulatives as roadblocks
that the whale would have to maneuver around.
Like most programmers, my students’ first
attempts were not completely successful.
This is when I introduced the word “debugging”. The kids loved coming up to the carpet with
their lines of code and trying out what they had written. Out of 15 tries, we did not have a single
student get it completely correct the first try. It was music to my ears when each child tried
their code and realized that it was incorrect and replied with, “I need to go
debug my code and try again.” This
activity was challenging enough that my students had to debug their program, but
not too challenging that they couldn’t debug it themselves.
My students learned key skills today in writing
and debugging code without a computer or device. Students worked on problem solving,
independent work and resilience. My
students also felt a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when they figured
out how to get the whale to the pink sticky note. When the period came to an end, there was a
lot of moaning and asking, “When are we going to play this again?” Little did they know that they were learning
key skills in problem solving, directional language and being able to describe
movement from one location to another using a grid map, which are all math
curriculum expectations.
I use to search for specific
topics and then match my students reading levels to the text. I would then print the various books out for
my students. This took a lot of time to print
and a lot of paper! I can usually find 2
or 3 different texts on the same topic in varying difficulty.
