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!
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