Check out the Powerpoint of the game - Who Wants to be a Millionare made by Carrie Gaffney and myself! Below is a collection of ideas for work students can complete on the iPad during guided reading independent time. These ideas have been gathered from various sources. Newsela.com: This is a site that was shared at the Student Engagement Conference. It has current event articles on multiple Lexile ranges. Students can read the article and take a quiz that is aligned to the ELA Common Core anchor standards. My students love the real world connections made with our current units of study. Science Techbook Board Builder: This tool was shared at the latest techbook training by Discovery. Students make a “poster board” of information including videos, images, and text. This is a great tool for science reviews. All media can be gathered directly from Discovery and boards can be shared with classmates, teachers, and the district. ThingLink is an iPad app that is VERY similar to the board builder. Students can make boards on any topic, vocabulary, latest novel, etc. Media files are pulled directly from the Internet and can be shared through email or a Safari Link posted on a blog/Edmodo. PicCollage is another online poster board maker. My students love creating these, but are limited to photos and text only. These can be saved to the iPad Camera Roll and posted to Weebly. I always require students to write at least 5 sentences to accompany the post. (TheCampSite 2012.weebly.com) For Language Arts, my students also use PicCollage to compare and contrast with Venn Diagrams and a variety of other story grammar maps. Science Techbook also offers a variety texts students can read, premade boards to explore, videos to view, virtual labs to experiment with, and interactive dictionaries to work in. I make questions/rubrics/assignments and use these tools as they integrate best with my current science unit of study. Scootpad: Available through a free app, students get a log in from the teacher and play games that practice basic skills integrated with Common Core. For the one paid upgrade, teachers can assign particular assessments and additional practice for any Common Core skill. This is also a great tool for reassessment. Edmodo: Students love watching videos on their iPads and using the Dollar Store headphones. I post some on Edmodo that integrate with various topics being covered and ask questions for responses. For example, 5th graders study inventors. I posted a Wright Brothers Animated Hero Classic video and posted the following prompt: Watch the Write Brothers video. How does the following word and definition relate to this video? (3 to 4 sentences) Tell about a time when YOU persevered. (3 sentences) PERSEVERANCE: per·se·ver·ance [pur-suh-veer-uhns] noun 1. steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement. On Weebly, students also post pictures or videos from science labs and math workshops from the day before. A minimum of 5 sentence explanation is required with the post. Students also use their blog to post our current writing pieces. All 5th graders at Mount Holly participate in our 50 Book Challenge. Students choose books on their level and have them approved by their teacher. Then, they select from a list of preapproved write ups. Write ups are genre specific and include options like book recommendations, summaries, friendly letters, vocabulary maps, and facts lists. These write ups can be hand written or posted to their blog. Also on Weebly, students often take on the role of a character in our book to write a blog post that would be specific to this person. iMovie Trailers: My students LOVE iMovie trailers. These are premade templates for various genres. Students choose a theme and insert their own pictures. This is a quick overview of the main events and main characters. These are posted to blogs and students seem to read books they wouldn’t have read after seeing trailers from classmates. iMovie, Pinnacle Studio, Loopster: Students make various movies from points of view of current Social Studies units. For example, we are currently studying the west. Students pretend to be leaving on a wagon train with their families to move out west. Students chose 5 journals/letters to write and illustrate what this was like. Many Social Studies standards were reinforced here. Students then search the web for photos that match their content, insert actual dates, add music, and read their journals to complete the movie. These are posted to Weebly with a 5 sentence explanation. In EduCreations, students make how to videos to post to their blog and write a 5 sentence advertisement. Most of my how to videos are current math concepts. Students share these and use their classmates’ videos to study. BrainPop: BP has a free app for “Today’s Featured Movie.” These are current event topics in a quick cartoon video format. The videos also have a quiz for students to take for comprehension. This is great for nonprint comprehension standards. Educational iPad apps/websites can also be valuable. These are not used everyday, but certainly can help with remediation and practice of a variety of skills. I make sure these are interactive and engaging. An example is an order of operations website a parent shared with my team: http://www.learnalberta.ca/content/mejhm/index.html?l=0&ID1=AB.MATH.JR.NUMB&ID2=AB.MATH.JR.NUMB.INTE&lesson=html/object_interactives/order_of_operations/use_it.html Emailing authors: Many students get engaged in one series of book with the same author. Students can email these authors to thank them for their work and ask any questions they may have about their work or the story they have read. Most authors’ contact information is readily available on the web. Examples of most of these can be found on the Student Blog pages link on my website: TheCampSite 2012.weebly.com. If you visit, please leave any students a comment on their work and what you think! |
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September 2014
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