What a crazy time of year! We have cross country running happening as well as all the fun spring events…we did an egg drop last week and our school participates in a “run for fun” where the kids all get outside running on a daily basis!
We have been continuing to use the Classroom suite – I use it daily in my daily 5. My daily 5 now looks a little different as we split the kids into groups of 3 or 4 and our principal, librarian, resources teachers, and reading teachers each take a group and do a “reading blitz” with the students, focusing on their reading levels and helping them improve their skills in a smaller setting. Therefore, our daily 5 has become more writing focused. I have a silly sentences center, interactive writing notebook center, 2 computer centers, printing practice and free writing going on these days! The kids have been loving it!
With the computers, the kids have been enjoying exploring the story maker. They love checking out pictures they can use to help make stories and they often try to add words to describe their pictures. One struggle we have been having is “saving” our work. It’s a learning curve to get the kids familiar with naming a document and saving it if they wish to do so.
I have also let my students become fairly independent with the computers. They are getting better at bringing them out of the cart and putting them away, and I often put one person in charge of plugging them back in and locking them up!

We’ve been using the classroom suite almost every day during daily 5 in grade 1. They get 15-20 minutes each, per day for our rotations…longer depending on the day! This goes into rotation with reading with the teacher, reading to themselves or with a friend, word work, etc. The kids have gotten quite used to using them, and rarely need assistance, as we only received ours in December, and with all the extra things December brings, they didn’t get to use them regularly until the new year.
I’ve also been able to put some kids in charge of setting them up for me (opening them up, plugging in headphones, making sure the program is open and ready!). They’ve become quite independent with it all! It’s been great!

Last Friday we got the computers up and running and got all the kids working on the computers. It was much easier than we thought. The students figured out how to log-in (we gave them an animal picture to find) and were able to work with little guidance. We figure it is only going to get easier as we use it more. While Chelsea was working with five kids at a time, Brendan was making puppets with the kids. We will try to get a picture put up on this post.

Here are some sites that I thought I would share:

1. Everfi:

Everfi is great for learning STEM education or Digital Citizenship or Financial Literacy. It is pretty cool.
Everfi

2. Bouncy Ball

You have to try this out. If you need some quiet time in the classroom or you want noise and movement this is your web site. The balls move faster the more loud it gets in the room.

Bouncy Balls

3. Dictation

I like to use dictation to get kids to go from speech to text. I use it with these handsets:

I have been using these microphones for a few years. They are pretty cheap from dollar stores for around 6 bucks. They are a low throw microphone so you can have many kids recording their voice and when you listen later you don’t hear much background noise.

I have used this for having younger students reflect on their learning. They just use an application like VideoBooth or Photobooth or Picasa and record their thoughts. I also use it with higher grades to have students tell me more about what they are thinking, what they know about a subject, to explain how to solve a problem. It is great for running records and other reading tests as the kids can all record at the same time (if you have enough phones and technology). I find I can get more information about what the kids know and don’t know using this technology.

Today, if effect, is day one of our project. The computers came in and the techs set them up nicely in a sweet little cart for charging.

We got all of the kid’s accounts created and first assignments given. Very soon, Brendan will be taking the kids for some puppetry learning while Chelsea and Lillian work with small groups getting them used to the layout of the program and how things work. We feel this will give both the kids and teachers a chance to see what it will look like for smooth operation during daily five.

Stay tuned for more info!