Apps I Use

Using iPads to Plan in Kindergarten

/ Kristi Meeuwse / Leave a comment

Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort. -Paul J. Meyer

Happy New Year! After 2 weeks and 3 weekends, we are back in school.  It was evident we had a little “brain drain” over the holidays.  Hopefully we can catch up and get moving by the end of the week.  After winter break is when we pick up speed and move full steam ahead.

One of the things I truly believe is that student engagement is dependent on their voice and choice in both the planning and execution of learning.  When we include even the youngest of children in the process, we get so much more concentrated effort from them.  This concept is the same for adults.  Aren’t we usually voicing concern as educators how our  voice needs to be heard in the decisions made on behalf of our students? When we are excluded from the process of decision making, we are less likely to buy into whatever it is we are being asked to do.  We are also less likely to implement changes with fidelity.

My students have quite a bit of choice in this classroom the first part of the year but after Christmas, they are included in the planning of their day.  Now, just as I would never open a closet door to a 3 year old and have them choose what to wear from an entire wardrobe of clothes, I would never just let go of the reins completely of the classroom.  I utilize a gradual release of responsibility and have some controlled choice in the beginning.  Giving students a few choices  all throughout the day, from the beginning of the year,  builds their confidence in their own abilities to make bigger choices later.

As my students walk in each morning from now on, they will have 5 must-do activities.  They may choose which order these items are completed.  They will open their notes app on their iPads and write out their plan for the day.  They then refer back to that note all throughout the day to see what they chose to do next.  The SmartBoard looks like this when they are making their plan:

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In the reading center, I want them to read  2 books on their reading level and then they may choose other books as well as book on their iPads to read. For writing,  they will work on their Writer’s Workshop.  A few of my students still need scaffolding and support with their writing so I have a specific conferencing time with those children. Today, I chose the app Pic Collage for them to illustrate and write a sentence but soon, they will have their own choice of creation apps in which to demonstrate understanding of unit-related vocabulary words. This work is saved and uploaded to Showbie for their work flow. Math includes small group activities and word work currently is involving word families.  Students use the ABC Magnet Board app to make 6 words of their choice in a given word family.  Today’s word work from one of my students looked like this:

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The student takes a screen shot of this work so that it is saved in the camera roll.  I can have them upload it to Showbie if I need them to or it can just stay in the camera roll as a work sample.  This particular app is great because it says the letter sounds as they manipulate them and once the word is created, it reads the word to them so they get immediate feedback.  Word Wizard is another great app for this kind of activity for the same reason.

So at the end of the 5 must-do activities, once all work is completed and checked, the student has free choice of any activity in the classroom.  This helps encourage timely work completion and on-task behavior, but in general, those things aren’t really a problem.  Their engagement is much higher as they have been a part of the planning process.

As students gain more independence and confidence in their abilities to make choices and move forward on their own initiative, this allows for other possibilities such as 20% time, Genius Hour, Makerspaces, etc…Again, this goes back to gradual release of responsibility, front-loading procedures, and giving students opportunities to develop those decision-making “muscles”.

As you start 2015, consider ways you can give your students more choice in the planning and demonstration of their learning.

What’s the plan??

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

The Hour of Code in Kindergarten

/ Kristi Meeuwse / 2 Comments


All the world is a laboratory to the inquiring mind.- Martin Fischer

The Hour of Code is a global movement reaching tens of millions of students in over 180 countries.  It is designed to demystify code and show that anyone can learn the basics.  Every student should have the opportunity to learn computer science.  It helps nurture problem solving skills, logic and creativity.  By starting early, students will have a foundation for success in any 21st century career path.

IMG_0024Our class has been working with the free Kodable app to learn coding.  It is a perfect way to offer a kid-friendly introduction to programming concepts and problem solving.  With Kodable, kids can learn to code before they even learn to read. In the short time we have been using Kodable, I already see computational and critical thinking, collaboration and perseverance. Some students are working with others, while some want to figure it out on their own.  I also love that they won’t ask me to help them.  Rather than come to me, they are going to others or sticking with it until they figure it out themselves.  This is how problem solving skills are developed and strengthened.  It is also interesting to see that some need to run their finger along the maze for each step to know which arrow to choose, while others can do it quickly in their heads.

 

Here is what one of the Kodable screens looks like:

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The goal is to get the fuzzy ball from one side to the other, while obtaining as many coins as possible. The students have to work on left and right, up and down, but they also have to use the color squares in the coding if they want the fuzzy ball to grab those coins in the middle.

The interest and engagement in this app has spilled over into other areas of the classroom.  The students are building their own mazes and having their friends figure out the code to move across the maze.

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Watching my students analyze and problem-solve, either solo or cooperatively, gives me a good indicator of where they are in the development of these important skills. The kids are completely engaged and their conversations are rich with logic and reason.

If you are thinking about the Hour of Code, give Kodable a try!

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

2-Page Spreads in iBooks Author

/ Kristi Meeuwse / 1 Comment

Never stop learning, because life never stops teaching. -author unknown

Recently, I was presenting on iBooks Author from the Early Childhood perspective along with 2 other Apple Distinguished Educators presenting from the middle school perspective.  I was so excited about their work and was inspired to try my hand at creating a 2-page spread activity in iBooks Author.

The idea behind the 2-page spread is that you don’t have to create an entire book…you can create an interactive experience across 2 pages.  My ADE friend, Sean Junkins has created a short, step-by-step guide for this process.  You can download his book here.

With Thanksgiving coming up, my 2-page spread is about the first Thanksgiving.  I started with creating a panoramic picture in Keynote.

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Then, following Sean’s directions, I created the 2-page spread in iBooks Author.  Once this was complete, I added the pop over widgets and the Keynote widget to deliver content.

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This is page one of the 2-page spread.  The small Pilgrim hats are pop-over widgets that contain information.  See the example below:

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The other pop over widget tells what food was actually served at the first Thanksgiving.  This allowed for good discussion and comparison with Thanksgiving today.  (This also meets our Social Studies standard for kindergarten in comparing lives now and long ago.)

The second page of the 2-page spread has a Keynote widget that when played, shows Pilgrim dress and Wampanoag Indian dress for the feast.  The small hat is the link to the Keynote.

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This is the first page of the Keynote.  The 2-slide Keynote link is below

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As the week progresses, I can add other content to this 2-page spread to engage my students in key facts about the first Thanksgiving.

If creating a book in iBooks Author is too daunting, try creating a 2-page spread or a virtual field trip as mentioned in Sean’s book.  His idea is not just create a book, but to create an experience.

I am excited to try other 2-page spreads to go with our upcoming units.  Remember, as life-long learners, we have to stay thirsty for knowledge.  In this case, you CAN teach an old dog new tricks!

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

iPads and Science in Kindergarten

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“Love the trees until their leaves fall off, then encourage them to try again next year.” -Chad Sugg

IMG_5602Fall is my favorite season, but living on the coast of South Carolina, we see very little evidence of the season.  We experience fall for about a week and a half in late November or early December.  The leaves are green, turn brown, then fall to the ground in that length of time.  So, I was excited to find a few  leaves on the school grounds that were living it up early! Party on…fall!

Talking about fall with my students is almost as difficult as talking about snow.  I say almost, because we do experience a bit of fall, butIMG_5601 we haven’t had significant snow fall here in 10 years.  It’s hard to even talk about the change in weather that fall brings when the high temperature today is 80 degrees. I know, I know…my friends in the north have no sympathy as they’ve already had their first snow fall.  But people, the struggle is real.  So today, in our short sleeves, we left our air conditioned class room to go look for fall leaves.  We discussed why there are so few leaves and the characteristics of the leaves we were able to find.  We made a chart of describing words and then, we grabbed our iPads.

They had a variety of leaves on their tables and they chose 2 or 3.  They opened Pic Collage and used the camera function in Pic Collage to photograph the leaves they chose.  After they added their pictures, they use the text function in Pic Collage to write about the leaves.  Here are a a couple of samples:

 

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Soon, my students will have the choice of which app to use to demonstrate their work.  We use Book Creator for math journals, but it is a great app for science journals, reading response journals etc…For this particular activity, we used Pic Collage, but we can add this Pic Collage image to our science journals in Book Creator. There are so many wonderful creation apps that allow students to create their own content and demonstrate their learning.  The hands-on portion of this activity created a great deal of rich conversation and enabled us to make the anchor chart.

A big part of early childhood education is experiential learning.  Giving children a variety of experiences and enhancing those experiences with the iPads creates long-lasting connections with learning.  The technology extends the learning experience and enriches it.  We spend a lot of time as educators preparing the path for the child, when we need to be preparing the child for the path.

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

 

 

App Smashing in Math

/ Kristi Meeuwse / 2 Comments

Math is like going to the gym for your brain. It sharpens your mind.-Danica McKellar

After a full day of teaching kindergarten, my mind could use a little sharpening.  It often feels like mush and I have to work hard to have adult conversation when I get home.  Surely that doesn’t mean I need to do more math…My students like math and they are enjoying working in our math journals that I’ve written about here.

We were working in our Geoboard app today making shapes. It is a free app that allows students to work with virtual geoboards without the hassle of rubber bands being snapped and popped all over the place. We made all kinds of shapes and talked about why we couldn’t make a circle.  We then learned how to do a screen shot of our work.

IMG_1036They had fun creating their shapes and making the screen shots.  My plan was to then have them upload the image into Showbie but a few students asked if we could put them in our Book Creator math journals first.  So, without delay, we immediately opened our math journals and uploaded our screen shots into the math journal created in Book Creator.  Then, I asked them what we should do with it now that the screen shot has been uploaded.  *Crickets* and blank stares.  Finally, someone said, “Aren’t you going to tell us what to do?”  I told them I wanted them to figure out what needed to be done and that they didn’t need me to tell them.  A bit more silence ensued and finally it was decided by a majority that they needed to label their picture.  Here is one that was completed today:

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Most didn’t finish but a few did.  The child used environmental print to write the shape words and then used the Pen tool in Book Creator to draw the arrows to each shape.  Some have decided they will use the recording function tomorrow to record themselves telling about the shapes.

By using Geoboard app and Book Creator, our math app smash was a fun and engaging way to work on this skill.  Don’t underestimate a 5 year old’s ability to handle multiple apps.  They not only understand, they come up with creative ways to do so.

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

5 Stars and Two Thumbs Up!

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One is rated by others as he rates himself.-French Proverb

Ratings…an important part of our culture… They tell us what movie to see, which books to read, what car to buy, and what restaurants to eat in.  Making informed choices is part of being a responsible adult.  The more an item costs, the more likely we are to pay attention to reviews and ratings.

We had a lengthy discussion one day about the merits of some of our apps.  They liked this app because it did certain things or didn’t like that app because it didn’t do other things.  They expressed their ideas about what they would change or add to apps and we talked about how some apps are free and some are not.  I showed them a screen shot from the app store and they asked me about the stars and what they meant. We talked about how people gave the stars as ratings for how much they liked or didn’t like an app.  Then we looked at Amazon.com and looked at some children’s books they knew.  We saw they had stars also.  Of course, they wanted to channel their own Siskel and Ebert and rate their favorite apps.

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So there you have it.  Kids really do have their own opinions about what they like and don’t like.  They know why also.  Part of giving kids voice and choice is really giving them the “voice” part.  Learning how to articulate what they want, what they like, what they don’t want or like is an important skill.  We have had to work hard to move away from liking something simply because it’s “cool”.  In giving voice to a writing piece, they are also expanding vocabulary and ideas.  Writing for a variety of purposes is  an important skill.  There’s no time like the present to begin!

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

 

More on Augmented Reality in Kindergarten

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Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.  -John Lennon

One thing young children are not lacking in is imagination.  They have no trouble pretending, playing make believe and suspending reality.  We’ve recently crossed over into the augmented reality arena. Augmented Reality (AR) allows for a digitally enhanced view of the real world. It allows the user to open or create layers of digital information on top of the physical world that can be viewed through a mobile device.  I’ve talked about our first foray in AR with Aurasma app here.  Aurasma is a great tool, and now my student’s are using the Chromville app to create in their own Augmented Reality worlds.

Chromville is a free app in the app store.  To use Chromville, you must first go to their website and decide which village you want to use.  There are 6 to choose from.  After you download and print the pages for your students, they then color the pages. NOTE: be careful that they don’t color over the village name in the corner of the page or else the AR part won’t work.  Once it has been colored, the student opens the Chromville app, selects which village he/she has colored and holds the iPad over the colored sheet.  The entire scene suddenly come to life in 3D and begin to move around.  There is a camera icon to take a screen shot also.  My students began playing around and inserting objects into the  view of the camera such as their hand or their foot and it became part of the scene.  After we took a screen shot, we uploaded the image into another app and wrote about our picture.  Here are a couple of examples.  You can see the items on the paper are in 3D.  On the iPad, these items are moving.

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The great thing about the screen shot is that they appear to be in 3D also which makes it fun for the kids to write about it.  It’s a pretty good day when kids are excited about writing.    Students learn not just by reading and writing. Their learning is enhanced when they create and interact with their environment.

AR is not new.  Remember the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit?  It’s gaining new momentum now with the mobile technology available and with the gamification of educational concepts. There are many different Augmented Reality apps available for all different age and ability levels.  You can search in your browser for AR apps and you will have a nice list to look through.

Obviously, there are more advanced uses for AR in older grades, but don’t tell that to my kindergarten students.  They are already exploring, creating and interacting with augmented reality and they get it! They have already given me a few lessons!

Give it a try!

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

 

Listen to Your Brain!

/ Kristi Meeuwse / 10 Comments

I thought about it in my brain, my brain gave me the answer and I liked the answer my brain gave me.-Isabelle, Age 6

If you ever need good quotes, just step into a kindergarten class.  I’m repeatedly told I need to write a book of their sayings.  It’s never a dull moment around here!

My students have choices about demonstrating their learning.  We recently finished a pond life unit and the work they had done during the unit was pretty extensive.  I felt pretty confident in what they knew and what they had learned.  As we were wrapping it up, a student asked why they hadn’t done any projects to show me what they had learned.  I explained that they had done several projects over the last 2 weeks and they had done a really good job on those.  Their puzzled faces indicated that they didn’t realize they had demonstrated their learning.  I pulled out some of their work samples they had uploaded to Showbie.  I put them on the Smart Board and we talked about several of them.

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We talked about this example and what animals were chosen and how they were chosen.  I asked what else they learned and was told, “We learned how to find pictures on the web in Pic Collage without going into Safari and we learned how to cut around them.”  popplet

We looked at this work sample created in Popplet Lite and we talked about how they didn’t know about water striders and how they walked on top of the water.  (Living where we live, it is not unusual for alligators to live in ponds.)  I asked what else we learned in this work sample and someone said they learned they wanted to go to that child’s house to see the alligator!

I reminded them that both of these projects show me what they know and what they have learned.  Someone piped up that he didn’t know that he was learning AND having fun at the same time.  (Ah yes…my work here is done!)

So, how did we get to this place…this place where learning and fun co-habitate, where children don’t even realize they are “doing work”?  It started back on day 1 in August.  It starts with children having voice and choice in their activities and moving on when they are ready… not when a worksheet, a basal reader, or a workbook page, or even a teacher tells them they are.  The work samples above were taken on the same day.  One student chose Pic Collage, another chose Popplet and yet another chose Book Creator.

It also means including the students in the information gathering process.  We made this anchor chart together and refer to it often when we are working on new learning.

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My students know that “an expert” can be an adult or another student in our classroom.  They know to ask for help when looking on the internet for answers and they also know where to find resource books in our classroom to reference.  We work hard all year to instill confidence in our students’ abilities to think for themselves….to “listen to their brains” and think about what their brain is “telling them.”

It is an ongoing process that gets refined all year long.  I want my students to go to first grade ready…ready to learn, ready to think and reason, and ready to have fun!

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

Digital Storytelling in Kindergarten

/ Kristi Meeuwse / 7 Comments

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. -Confucius

I’ve been trying to find ways to incorporate more photography in my classroom.  It is a recent passion of mine and I think there is a lot of value in incorporating pictures into student work and writing… not my pictures, but their own.  After all, young children have a unique perspective on the world.  Their pint sized view lets them see things from different angles than adults.

Their iPads have cameras and they love using them to photograph everything from a spider in the room to their left nostril.  We have used the iPad cameras to document their work and their learning. For a change, we used my Olloclip on my iPhone.  You can check out the Olloclip here and here.  I’ve been using it to take several macro shots of foliage, but the fisheye lens was very intriguing to my students when I showed it to them.  After a few days being cooped up inside with rain, we took to the outdoors to try out a few shots.  I put their pictures in Showbie and they downloaded them into their PaperDesk Pro app.  This is a great app for journaling.  Once their photos were downloaded into their notebook, they wrote about what they saw.  Here are a couple of samples:

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Screen Shot 2014-03-19 at 12.53.03 PMThis takes a little while so we are doing a few each day until everyone gets a turn.  Because it was different from our usual writing workshop, the kids were excited to write about their picture.  They wanted to take more pictures and write about them.  Because we offer choice in our classroom, some children are taking screen shots of their creations in Blokify and are importing them into Paper Desk Pro and writing about them.

While some young writers struggle with traditional literacy, using digital storytelling engages students and encourages them to employ different kinds of literacies to complete their final product.  The PaperDesk Pro app allows you to add voice notes so students who have difficulty writing can dictate their story, or students who want to read what they have written may record themselves doing so.  Simply generating text can be daunting to a child.  Incorporating images, speech, or even music enables students to create in a way that they couldn’t otherwise.  The technology allows us to redefine the way we learn.

As we move into the final 45 days of school, I want my students stretching and exploring, learning and creating.  We will be app-smashing, building, photographing, experimenting, and continually redefining what it means to be literate in today’s digital world.

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

Back to Blokify

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Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. – Roger Lewin

So, Blokify has turned out to be quite the hit in our room.  I wrote about using the app last time. It has been amazing what has transpired in just one week! We Skyped with Jennifer at Blokify last Friday.  The kids wrote out their questions ahead of time for her.  They had very thoughtful questions and she spoke to them in a way they understood.  She was printing out one of the structures in her office on the 3D printer and she sent us a couple of samples.

Blokify structuresThese arrived in the mail today at school and you would have thought it was Christmas with all of the excitement.  The kids made observations on the objects.  One is heavier, one is with color blocks, and one has more details on it.  They speculated about what the material looked like before the objects were printed and some even drew sketches of the objects on their Drawing Pad app so they could use them in writing.  In the math center, some took wooden unit blocks and tried to re-create the structures.

One of the best things that has happened as a result of using this app is the collaboration between the kids working together to problem solve to build the structures in the app.  One student grabbed some drawing paper, drew squares to represent the blocks and gave it to a friend.  “Here’s your blueprint” he said. That friend then worked in Blokify to try and build what the friend drew for him while the other child made it with unit blocks.

unit blocksIn a recent Kinderchat about Math on Twitter, several of us lamented how math was hard for us in school and that we struggled with it.  We realized that through those experiences, we work harder to make sure our students don’t have those some experiences.  Whether it’s hands-on or virtual activities or a combination of both,  we are working to build critical thinking and problem-solving skills with our students.

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Tucker is trying to recreate the pirate ship in Blokify from the 3D model.

Listening to their conversations, I find even I am impressed…”I need to do more research on how the 3D printer works.” “I can help you make that.  You have to see it in your mind first.”  “I will take a screen shot of my structure and then you can try to make it look like mine.”  “I can’t draw in 3D on paper but I can create in 3D on my iPad.” “Ask (Child’s Name)…he is an expert!

When another colleague found Blokify and suggested we download it, I had no idea the depth of thinking, problem solving and conversation that would take place.  This is definitely not a flash-in-the-pan app for us.  I see my kids sticking with it, building, problem solving and thinking critically for some time.

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