Month: February 2015

Teacher Created Texts in Book Creator

/ Kristi Meeuwse / 13 Comments

Literacy is one of the greatest gifts a person could receive. -Jen Selinsky

My kindergarten students are becoming voracious readers and most of them are ready for some fresh book selections. I like to create books for them to read and you can read more about that here. While I love using iBooks Author to create multi-touch books, I realize not everyone has access to a Macbook to create them. A good alternative is Book Creator. This is one of my students’ favorite apps to use, and it is a great way for educators to create their own texts.

Quick and easy are two mandates from time-pressed educators in creating learning materials for students. In fact, my dissertation topic will be looking at the successes achieved in classrooms that use e-books to enhance literacy and creating an implementation model. Why aren’t more educators creating their own texts? Is it will or skill?  Or, is it a lack of awareness of the power of these texts in literacy development? (Your comments below would be very welcome here as I am starting to research my topic!)

Anyway, back to quick and easy…Book Creator meets this demand. Take a quick inventory of your students’ interests and get to work! The boys in my classroom love dirt bikes and super heroes. Ten minutes later, I have 2 books cranked out to be added to their iPads. My girls love Disney princesses and baby animals. Ten more minutes and 2 more books. I use the Add Sound feature to assist with some necessary vocabulary words. I underline the word, speak the word using Add Sound, and place the speaker icon next to the underlined word. Then I upload the book to Showbie, our workflow app. My kindergarten students are able to go into Showbie independently and download the books to their iBooks app.

Here are a few screen shots:

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My students have been independently reading and partner reading with these books.  Some have asked if they can create their own books with drawings they have created on the iPad. One student started his own Super Hero book last week because I omitted one his favorites. Way to problem solve!!

Watching their excitement each time they download a new book is satisfaction enough for me. When they ask me for more, I remind them they are able to create their own books as well!

If you have Book Creator, I hope you will work on creating some books for your students.  If you don’t, what are you waiting for?

Today we will do exciting new things. Let’s get to it!

Creativity and Inspiration with iPads in Kindergarten

/ Kristi Meeuwse / 4 Comments

A good teacher can inspire hope, ignite the imagination, and instill a love of learning.-Brad Henry

I would love to say today’s post is about an awesome lesson I taught, or an amazing activity I had my kids do. The most credit I can claim is allowing voice and choice in the classroom and giving my students time and opportunities to create.

Today, during their free time, two girls were playing school. They were pretending to teach each other. One was teaching math, the other, phonics. I was working with some small groups of children and did not see the “work” they had given each other to do until later. The one teaching phonics, had her “student” use the Feltboard app and Pic Collage to create this:

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The phonics teacher had the student create the C page in Feltboard app, save to the camera roll, import into Pic Collage and label the items. The one playing the math teacher had her “student” create this:

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She had her student use Feltboard app to demonstrate how many ways she could make 10. Hmm…why didn’t I think of that?

Our students love learning. They love creating their own learning and they love teaching each other. The truth is, they come up with some pretty amazing things on their own when we give them the opportunity. When we schedule every minute of their day, there is no room for creativity, problem solving, critical thinking, making, doing, or being. Giving our students time to think, collaborate, and create allows them room to grow and room to be.

Another child chose to spend her free time writing today. Here is what she wrote:

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Do you set your classroom and students up for success? Do you open up parts of their day to create, to have voice and choice in what they do and how they do it? Do you enable and environment of curiosity rather than compliance? When we do these things, richness flows as even the youngest of students demonstrate they are quite capable of doing some pretty amazing things.

Are you the great teacher that inspires hope, ignites hope and instills a love for learning?

Today we will do great things. Let’s get started!

Finding Your Passion for Teaching

/ Kristi Meeuwse / 1 Comment

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.-Nelson Mandela

I am in the third week of my doctoral program and the words I am currently using to describe it are “wonderfully awful”. It is exciting and challenging and….no surprise, a lot of work.  A. Lot. I have spent the last 3 weeks teaching school all day and studying all afternoon and evening…and all day Saturdays and Sundays. At times I look and feel like a zombie.  I am thrilled to have this brief opportunity to turn away from “scholarly writing” to writing in my own voice in this blog post.  It’s a sweet breath of relief. So if it is so wonderfully awful, why then, am I subjecting myself (and those around me) to this significant life change? Why, when I have only four years remaining before I retire from teaching, am I putting myself through this? Don’t think that I haven’t asked myself those same questions more than a few times over the last three weeks. After much reflection, it simply comes down to passion…passion for the art of teaching, passion for helping and empowering others to be more and learn more, passion for lifelong learning, and passion for the meaningful integration of technology into teaching and learning.

Everyone one of you has a journey. Each of you have a passion for what you are doing. Educators have to have passion in order to do what they do. It isn’t an easy calling.  It isn’t an easy art. It is easy to lose your passion, however. How do you keep your passion alive? How do you feed those creative energies that fuel you each day? I am not suggesting that you need to join a doctoral cohort in order to rekindle your passion. This is my journey, but it doesn’t have to be yours. Reading professional texts, visiting other educators, finding a PLN (professional learning network)…all of these things can renew your passions.  One of the texts I highly recommend is Tony Wagner’s The Global Achievement Gap: Why Even Our Best Schools Don’t Teach The New Survival Skills-And What We Can Do About It. It is thought provoking and will definitely get you fired up.

IMG_0336As for visiting other classrooms, this can be a truly rewarding experience.  I recently was visited by some wonderful educators in Atlanta. They spent the day observing in my classroom.  Their observations and conversations helped them reflect and plan strategies for moving forward. Sometimes, simply seeing something in person is all you need to spark creative ideas. Educators need to take more time to collaborate and engage in meaningful dialogue with other educators. On the occasions I have visited other classrooms, I have always come away with something that may have seemed very simple, but impacted in big ways. It is worth the effort to get release time from school to engage in personal professional development.

So, where are you at this point in the school year? Are you weary? Are you on autopilot? Do you even know where you are? It’s ok. Our profession is not always equipped to provide us with what we need to be effective, passionate, educators. What steps can you take today to ignite that passion that brought you into this profession? I can’t stress enough how important it is to shake things up at times, to step out of your comfort zone, to stretch, to grow.

You can do it. Let’s change the world.

Today we will do exciting new things. Let’s get to it!