Sitting in the quiet of the early morning on day 10 of Christmas break, I realize I’ve successfully avoided thinking about school up until this point, but my mind keeps getting little tugs reminding me that vacation will soon be over. I hope you have had a restful break…one that I know every teacher this year has needed desperately.

As we get ready to close out 2021, I wanted to share a few things we worked on this fall.

In late October, we completed our class set of iPads and we started working on enhancing our literacy activities using various apps. We upload all of our work to SeeSaw. Here are a few samples:

We also used the Drawing Pad app to show some fall leaves, the life cycle of pumpkins and to illustrate the gingerbread man.

In Book Creator, our first book was I See. The kids incorporated their sight words as well as some environmental print to write and illustrate a three page book. To create the environmental print, I make an anchor chart for each letter of the alphabet with the kids supplying the words. We hang these charts all around the room and the kids use them all throughout the year. Since they supplied the words, there is so much ownership in the charts. Here are some screenshots of the charts and a couple of pages from one of the books:

The kids love working in Book Creator so we will definitely be creating more books in the new year. I want to start keeping math and science journals as well. Maybe these will be my New Year’s resolutions since dieting and exercise never seem to stick!

What are you up to in your classrooms? I would love to hear from you!

Happy New Year!