I do not know why I never used this before, but it is great! Riddle is an online tool to use for a quiz, personality test, opinion poll, interactive story, list, or survey. In this case, I used the quiz application. When trying to create a quiz, it was very easy to maneuver around the cite and create it. I want to keep things interesting and engaging in the classroom for my students rather than doing the same thing. A coworker introduced me to this tool, so I thought it would be good to implement it into my lesson as an exit slip. We are introducing Text Features for Unit 4 ELA. I used a five question quiz to gauge my students understanding. They had to answer: Fiction, Nonfiction, or Both. I pushed it out through Google Classroom, and students were very quick to catch on. They clicked on the link and were done with the quiz in less than 5 minutes. What I liked about this was the use of pictures. I was able to attach pictures to each question which was a great visual for all of my students. After each student took the quiz, they had to share their results with me. This is a quick way to see if I need to go back and reteach or if I can keep moving on. I am still trying to get familiar with this tool and learn more about it, but I would highly recommend incorporating this as quick assessments!
Remind is a great tool to use to communicate with parents. There is a free app for it, but you do not need to have it to receive or send messages. I use Remind to communicate with my parents weekly. If parents do not have the app, they will be receiving the message as a text message straight to their phone. The beauty about this program is that even though they are receiving it in this manner, it is not going to come from your personal phone number! This resource is a very quick and efficient way to send reminders or messages to parents. For example, we earned our class reward for tomorrow, Wednesday, March 14, and the students chose to have stuffed animal day. Instead of sending out an email, I sent a quick message to the parents reminding them of our special day tomorrow. If needed, I can also send messages to individual people. This way if I do not need to contact the whole class, I can select one or a few recipients and contact them directly. However, there can be some setbacks using this tools. The downfall to using this Remind is the immediate feedback. Since it is quick, some parents want your feedback right away and then might get frustrated if you haven't gotten back to them in a timely manner (not that we are busy or anything with everything teachers need to take care of throughout the day). I would highly recommend this resource to others!
We are just finishing up our Biography Buddies activity where students are interviewing one another and writing about their buddy. To wrap it up, we tried doing a wordle. My kiddos have never heard of this before, so they were excited to try something new. To start off, I should them how to input the information. To make a word bigger, you have to add it more times and if you want two words to be connected, you have to put a hyphen between the two words. At first, they were a little thrown off by this because the red squiggly line kept appearing (they know that means the word is spelled wrong). They started to get the hang of it as we went along though. Some kids would tell me, "Miss Johns that word is spelled wrong." The others would chime in saying, "No, you can't have any spaces if you want them together." It was cute seeing them remind each other that it is okay! Once I was done adding all my words, I showed them the finished piece. They were all taken back by it and thought it was amazing that they couldn't wait to get started! :) We filled out a generic organizer with information they would be including in their wordle. For example: name, family members, live, how old, favorite color and food, words to describe your buddy, favorite hobby, etc. Once they were done, they got started. I shared out the link with them via Google Classroom so they could access it right away. They really took their time creating their wordle and including colors they thought their buddy would like and picking a font that attracted their eye. When they had finished, they were so proud of their creation. They called me over and wanted to print it right away so their buddy could get the finished product. At the end of the school year, this would be a fun and engaging activity to talk about the whole school and create a wordle reflecting on the year we had! :)
For this unit in ELA, we are taking a look at Inspiring Individuals. For the past two years as a first grade teacher, the students have always loved this unit. After we talk about inspiring individuals and what character traits they have and what they do to make them inspiring, I love how students start to make the connection to their own life. They identify their parents as being inspiring individuals, their grandma's and grandpa's, even non-family members. It is just a special time to make a personal connection and see students get excited about it. We have spent the past few days taking a look at Rosa Parks. This sparked such a great discussion on how she wasn't treated equally and my kiddos kept saying how it is not fair and no person should be treated that way. As a class, we identified what she did to change things and how people stood up for what was right. At the end of these lessons, we talk about what character trait(s) she has shown and then students talk about how they have shown that trait as well. For example, if a character was brave in the story we were reading, they write a response on how they have been brave as well. For this story, I wanted to change it up a little bit rather then the normal response. In my first blog, I talked about how we have been working on typing. This was another opportunity to try and implement multiple skills to practice in our response portion. As pictured above, students opened this google doc from Google Classroom. This was in place of their normal response they usually do after a reading. My students had to write about how they were like Rosa Parks, including the character trait Rosa Parks possessed. There was a little catch to this though! :) Students not only had to write, but they had the opportunity to take their own picture and insert there picture on the bus as if they were sitting with Rosa Parks at this time. It turned out much better than I had planned, and students wanted to include their friends and tried to have them join their bus. It was adorable! We ran out of time to finish, so I told my kiddos we are going to revisit this when we come back Monday and finish it. I thought I planned enough time, but it took longer than expected. That is okay though, because we can always come back to it and finish the response. When they are done, they will submit it so I can look at each. I have never left a comment on an assignment or even tried to send it back to them. We will see how this goes on Monday!
Was today an exciting day or what!! We tried our first Kahoot, and it was definitely a hoot! :) I have been wanting to try this, but have been very hesitant. That is not the case anymore. This week, we were finishing up synonyms and antonyms. I found a kahoot already created online and thought I would start from there. The kiddos learned on the fly as we did it, and they did such a great job. At first, they wanted to shout out the answers, but they started to do a better job of not shouting out as we went along and see what people came up with for the answer. They got immediate feedback as they answered, and could tell if they got the answer correct or incorrect. As a class, we could see how many people voted for each response, but it didn't show who did what. Only that student could see their result on their Chromebook. When we finished looking at how many people voted for each response, it calculated the leader boards. I was very nervous students would have a hard time with this and would be concerned if they were in the top 5 or not, but this was not the case. The leader boards changed every round, and the students cheered every single time when they appeared, regardless of whether they were on there or not. This made me feel better about it. I like this activity because it is a fun and engaging review, and I can use this as an assessment to see which students specifically picked what. Right after we finished and learned how to get out of it, students asked if we can do another one later! They were just so excited about it! I told them I can see what I can do and maybe we can do one for when we go over Shades of Meaning and future lessons. As we use them more and get comfortable with it, I will have to try and create my own to meet the needs of my students. That will be my next challenge or task to take on. Possibly in math or even practicing our sight words. We will see what happens! :)
This is my first blog entry ever, so let's see how this goes! In my classroom, practicing and knowing sight words in very important. These are words they should be able to read and spell as soon as they see the word. As in other classroom's I am sure, I have students in many different ranges regarding their ability. To meet all of their needs, I wanted to do something that would not only push my lower level students, but also push my higher students and keep everyone engaged. I have known about padlet, so I wanted to give it a try. Today was our second time using it, and it was amazing. Last week, we tried it and it was a learning experience because they have never seen it before. Today, students took off with it. When I told them to go to Google Classroom and we are going to practice our sight words before our spell check, they started cheering they were so excited! :) What I have them do is write the word, and then try to use it in a sentence. We have also been practicing our typing skills, so why not incorporate typing into our sight word practice as well. When the kiddos open Google Classroom, they knew exactly what to do this time and they got started right away. Some still have trouble on how to do the punctuation and capitalize letters, but their "teammates" at their table help them out. To challenge some of my higher level students, I had them write sentences using two of the sight words, and they took this very seriously. Those kiddos even showed me they were trying to use other sight words we have done previously. They just got so excited seeing their posts on the screen! Some students even went up to the SmartBoard to show their teammate their response. Not one student was hesitant to try this. They either asked me if they needed help, or they asked one of their teammates. Some students got further than others and some just wrote out the words, yet all the students were so excited to see what everyone did and share that excitement with them. I will have to see how I can keep this engaging for the future and change it up so students can work with one another to identify the sight words through each others work. Stay tuned!
|
Miss Johns1st Grade ArchivesCategories |