Easter Listening Center

Keeping the boys and girls in kindergarten and first grade interested in reading all year long can be challenging.  That is why I have been working so hard this year to find stories the kids will be motivated to listen to.  It is more work than you think.   Creating an engaging listening center is a lot different these days, my students prefer to listen and watch stories on the ipad.  

When I first got my ipad I was able to find lots of story apps for $1 however that has not been the case lately.  In fact many of the stories can be costly or the apps are confusing for young readers to manage on their own.  So I have turned to youtube and the generosity of the wonderful people who are reading the stories and recording them.  

I find links on youtube and filter out the surrounding advertisements and create my own qr codes. My students use this center on their own as part of my weekly reading block and I want to make sure the links are safe for them.  Each week my students are required to listen to one story on the ipad and complete a listening form.  I use all sorts of different forms I have collected over the years on Pinterest and various other sources during the first two quarters. 

However, once third quarter starts I have the students start to complete the forms attached to the unit.  We start with the simple ones and work our way to writing our own letter on lined paper. 

I like to print out the listening cards on card stock and laminate them.  I punch a hole in the corner and gather them together with a ring.  I keep the cards in the ipad basket.  Another teacher at my school hangs the cards up on the students’ lockers.  Another organization idea might be to keep them in a small binder or create a bulletin board with the cards in your reading center. 

Click Here to get The Easter Listening Center for FREE! 

Author of the Month -- Doreen Cronin

Doreen Cronin
(Google Image)

Doreen Cronin is the Author of the Month for November in First Grade.   I thought it was the perfect choice with the elections, her book Duck for President is hilarious.   

I collected some free resources and have a link for them here.  I also have some links for the stories I found on youtube.  
 
I put together some qr cards with books jackets for the listening center.  You can pick those up free here. I mount them on colorful card stock and hang them up in the reading center.  What I like about the posters is that they serve two purposes:  1.  decoration and 2.  They have qr codes on them that the students can use with the ipads as a listening center.  

Below are some great ideas I found on Pinterest.  I really like the last activity.   

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Updating the Listening Center

My Listening Center has changed a lot over the years it all started with the cassette player....

Then I upgraded to ipads...

When I moved to first grade I had several ipads so we had a white baskets

For the most part I had my students just listening to the handful of apps that I had purchased and mainly Mercer Meyer  However last year I learned how to make QR codes and how to purify youtube videos.  This enabled me to control exactly what my student view on youtube.

Last year I had the students make their own listening center in first grade with the ipads. Although we had a lot of fun doing this with a large class it took up to a month to get through all the student reading and lot of my prep time.

So this year I am slowly creating listening center material for the authors the students are learning about each month.   This month I put together some posters for Mo Willems.

Click Here for free Posters with QR Listening Codes

I also have some links with ideas for teachers that I found on Pinterest. If you would like to see more of my author resource page go to http://ckprimary.wikispaces.com/Author+Sites.

Fire Prevention Ideas

It's time to start planning for Fire Safety Awareness.  There are so many wonderful books to read to the class however a rare one to find is my favorite by Felicia Bond, Poinsettia and the Firefighters.  I checked on Amazon and it is only available to purchase as a used book.  The kids love the story most of them can identify with the character Poinsettia.  

I added the poem Ten Little Firefighters to my Poetry Basket this year.  As always I made a homework sheet for the children to share with their families.  I believe I found the poem on Pinterest, however I did not have anything marked down in my notebook from last year.    

Click Here for your FREE copy

My main resource for the week are these videos I found by the Ocoee Fire Department on Youtube.  I have them on my teaching site CK Primary.    They are super cute with puppets and firefighters.  My class loves them.  I also used a free Fire Safety Pack by The Clever Classroom as a follow up.  I do not use all the pages.  I pick and choose which ones  that are the most important to me based on the time we have together that week.   

Finally, I found some free apps that I am looking forward to checking out.  They all can be downloaded on the Apple App Store.  

 

Notes about Ipads

I am taking an ipad course and the first assignment is how do you use ipads in your classroom and in your school.  I thought it would be nice to share this information with you as well.

I love having ipads in my classroom.  I have two school ipads and two personal ipads that I have synced with the school account.  For the most part I use the ipads for enrichment type activities because I do not have enough for everyone.   I set up the apps or qr lessons for the students and they just use the ipads to complete the directions I give them.

I prefer teaching in small groups so generally I have a group of five to six children sharing the four ipads.  My students have been pretty good about sharing however generally one student tends to do most of the work.  I manage my own ipads and have had to learn how to trouble shoot the best I can.  I don’t have much of a storage place for them.  I use some magazine containers between my computers and the end of the day I lock them in my teacher locker.

I read the blog post by Jayne Clare, 17 Pros and Cons of Using Ipads in the Classroom.  I agreed with a lot of what the author was saying.  Ipads are great for elementary classrooms because they have a good battery life, there are so many apps out there, it is super user friendly for young children, it is lightweight and easy for them to carry and best of all it is fast.  I also like the students can plug in their headphones and not disturb the rest of the class.  

An issue my school needs to think about is accountability.  Not all homerooms have ipads, I think several of the elementary teachers had them on a wish list one year.  So the middle school teachers are constantly borrowing them, needless to say, the ipads are coming back scratched and the protective covers are starting to stretch off.   Who is responsible for them? 

I would also like to see my school offer more training for the teachers and some type of lessons of internet safety for the students. 

QR Reading Center

This QR Reading Center has been a vision of mine for a long time.  I just did not know how to pull it off.  After reading the book, Reading in the Wild, I was invigorated to find a way to make this project work. With the guidance of the computer teacher at my school and some advice from the blog Reflections of Teaching, Learning and Technology I was able to make my vision work.     

I worked with one reading group at a time.  For the first time I let them pick any book they enjoyed reading, so we have a lot of Mo Willems.  They practiced reading their book for a week.  

Then I used my ipad and took their photo with the book.

Then I took a video of them reading the book on the ipad.  I had them sit down in a chair and I tried to get as much of the book as
possible.  I want the children who view the video to read along. 


Next I downloaded the youtube app on my ipad for free.

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Then I uploaded the videos to youtube.  I checked the unlisted box so that only I could view them.  This uploading process takes a long time.  Once the process is done I click on share so I could get the link code.  

Once I got the code I copied it and took it to ViewPure.com

Then I purified the video so the children will not have ads around it.  Now I have a new link code.  Again I copy the new code and take it to a qr generator.

I use QR Generator.com because it is FREE and it works great!

I created a code and printed out the code.  

Then I put the code and picture on the file cabinets.  

Now my students can go to the reading center with the ipads and scan the codes and read along.  

In my classroom we use the scanner i-gnima on the ipads. Again it is free and kid friendly.  

One theme you may notice with the sites and apps I use is that they are.....FREE.  I don't know about you but I have an extremely limited budget of $250 at the private school I teach at. So I try to stretch my money the best I can. I appreciate companies who realize there are teachers who are trying to create fun learning activities with limited funds.  

Christmas Card Exchange 2015

This is by far one of our favorite projects during the holiday season.  It is a Christmas Card Exchange.  Once again I worked with the site Projects by Jen and was put in a group of thirty other schools.  

The theme this year was SNOW!  I couldn't resist finding a card with my favorite animal...penguins.  I love the Santa hats on them.  (Yes of course I found the idea on Pinterest.)  We marked on a chart of the United States where all are cards were going and mailed them by Dec. 1.  The Christmas cards started coming in.  It was so much fun.  

I did something new this year.  I used the smartboard and typed in the address of the school on google maps and then we could see what the school looked like.  

Then I clicked on the star and saved the spot on the map and zoomed out on google earth so we could see if the school was in the city or small town.  This was what we were learning about in Social Studies.  

Then we zoom out further to see where in the United States the school was.

You can see some of the other starred places we went to see and we compare them to were we live.  I used this opportunity to reinforce vocabulary from our Social Studies text book for example: Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Canada, Mexico and North America. This was a great way to make the information in the textbook relevant to real life.  

The kids favorite part was zooming way out to see the planet Earth.

Next year my goal is going to be to Skype with another classroom. This is something we have not done yet.  I think it will be fun to try. 

We displayed all our cards in the hallway for the school to share in the fun.  

Book Making for First Graders

After I shared my Spookley lesson with a friend of mine, who teaches kindergarten, she said you have to check out Story Maker at abcya.com.  So when I took my class up to the computer lab I told them when they were done with their math homework they could try something new.  It is simple to use.  I demonstrated how to use the program and let them experiment on their own.  

On the right side are three icons, picture, text, and full page.  When you want to add text you push the text button and the text screen appears.

You push the picture screen and you can create a picture using all kinds of tools and colors.  

On our computers at school if you save your project it will save but not open back into abcya so the children can not go back and edit it.  I have them make one page and print.  So I make sure we have that part of the book.  

The last icon is for preview.

The pages turn out so cute and professional.  I will definitely have my students use this program for publishing some of their work. One of my students had so much fun she made this short turkey story.

Spookley the Square Pumpkin

One of my goals this year is to improve my teaching in the computer lab and another one is to create more class books.  So I combined these two goals for this Halloween lesson with the book, The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin.  

The purpose of this lesson was to provide my students with a learning opportunity that would work throughout the Halloween week while still working on writing and technology outcomes. 

Lesson One:  (Shared Reading)

Focus:  To read and enjoy the story The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin and compare and contrast Spookley’s feelings.

Lesson Two:  (Computer Lab -- Day One)

Focus:  Using the program Notebook 11 create a unique pumpkin, print and save the document.    

Tools to Demonstrate:  Toolbar, Arrow pointer, delete, shape, enlarge, turn shapes, fill color bucket, print and saving the document.

Lesson Three::  (Writing Workshop)

Focus:  Write 2 complete sentences in writing journal to describe your pumpkin.  You can give your pumpkin a name.  

Materials:  Pocket Chart & Cards with Adjectives (Shapes, Sizes, and Colors)

Lesson Four:  (Computer Lab -- Day Two)

Focus:  Each student will retrieve a saved document and add two sentences to it.  Then they will print and take a picture of it with an ipad. .   

Bring:  Writing Journal to the Lab

Tools to Demonstrate:  Adding Text, Choosing a Font, how to print, and take a screenshot.  

I put all the printed pages in a binder to create a class book.  I like to use binders with page protectors because they stand up to student use and then at the end of the year it is easy to give the students back their work.

The computer teacher at my school created a power point presentation for the parents. Unfortunately I could not load it onto this page. If you want to see it let me know and I can email it to you.