An Exciting First Week

The 2014-15 school year is off to a great start. Students have shown up and are eager to learn - especially learning with their iPads. Some of them even hugged their iPads when they got them out for the first time! Here's a peek into what happened the first week in a couple of iPad flip learning classrooms:

2nd Grade:
The teachers introduced the iPads and quickly began having them complete some "apptivities" using various apps, such as Quick Voice Recorder to complete audio recordings. When not being used the procedure in this classroom is to place the iPads on top of their desk name tags.

5th Grade:
Most of the students in this 5th grade classroom used iPads in 4th grade, so they were very familiar with using them. However, we added some new apps for them over the summer, such as Shadow Puppet Edu, Stick Around, and ABCya Word Cloud. This teacher is great at exploring new apps and figuring out how they can impact learning in her classroom. So for the first day with the iPads, she chose to introduce word clouds to the students using ABCya Word Cloud. The students created word clouds using the names of the students in their classroom and tested out the different ways to change and customize their word clouds.

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Digital Science Fair Projects

At the end of the year, many of our schools hold school wide science fairs. Students plan Science fair project tri-fold display board and implement projects and then present the process and resulting data on tri-fold display boards much like this. One class decided to go green and do away with using display boards. They conducted their experiments and recorded the data but rather than create paper reports they used their iPads. Project Data Graphs The students took pictures and video and created graphs and other visual representations and imported those into the Explain Everything app. During the science fair, students brought their iPads to the school's multipurpose room and presented their projects to attendees right from the iPads. In addition to using digital tools, these students are also developing their listening, speaking, and presentation skills - all vital to college and career readiness.

Holt Interactive Graphic Organizers

Check out these online graphic organizers from Holt: Holt Interactive Graphic Organizers The site has over 30 graphic organizers for a variety of tasks. Each graphic organizer is interactive and can be downloaded onto a computer with Adobe Reader and be filled out right on the computer. There are also Teaching Notes available with tips and lesson ideas for each organizer What we really appreciate is that they also work on the iPads! Using the "Open In" feature in an IOS web browser such as Safari or Chrome, you can import the graphic organizer into the Adobe Reader app and easily fill in the fields. Students can then take a screenshot of the completed graphic organizer to share with their teacher or import into another iPad project.

T. A. G. Strategy

We want our students to reflect on their own work but also to be able to give effective feedback to each other. This is true for writing, conversations, or digital work. It's tough for us as adults and even more difficult for our students - no matter the grade level. As we have started using Seesaw ( https://web.seesaw.me/ ) and its student Comment feature, I've seen lots of "I like ..." and "That's cool" comments. Not very meaningful. I recently came across this simple strategy called T.A.G: Tell, Ask, Give. An easy to remember acronym and a good way to get students started in making effective comments. I've seen several variations but like these descriptors for the acronym: Tell - something you learned or was meaningful ("like" if they are specific about what they like) Ask - a question Give - a compliment or recommendation (depending upon the purpose for the comment) Download a pdf here . Here are some additional ...

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