elementary

Aug 18

App Icon Alphabet for Word Wall

Aug 18

So I’ve made some major changes in the job department in the last month, but I’ll be back later to give an update on that! First, I want to share something that I think is a super cute idea.

As I was doing my morning ritual of scrolling through Pinterest before I got up this morning (that’s addiction y’all), I saw a super cute idea from one of my favorite Pinners for teacher resources, Jennifer Jones.

Source: snowbadger.com via Leslie on Pinterest

The idea was to use the App icons as headers for a Word Wall. Totally cute, right? So I repinned and tweeted the pin. After doing so, I realized that the link to icons was not to the individual icons, but to 1 image of all of them compiled. So of course, being the super geek that I am, I spent a little bit of time this afternoon finding icons and compiling them so they’d be simple for my teacher friends to print out. After a bit of searching, I was able to find all the letters…and even found multiple choices for a couple. I hope these are useful to some of you! You can see a preview of these letters to the right…but you can download the whole thing using the link below!

App Icon Alphabet for Word Wall

So what do you think- can you guess the apps these icons represent? Any changes I should make? Let me know if you have other apps that would make for better letters!

Jun 21

Social Studies Fun with QR Codes

Jun 21

I don’t know about any of you, but it has been a whirlwind summer so far! This week our county has started summer hours for 12 month employees, which are Monday – Thursday 7am – 6pm. It makes for long days, but I am really looking forward to having Fridays off for the next few weeks!

I’m just now getting the chance to sit down and reflect on a few things from the school year, and I wanted to share one of the fun things I had the opportunity to do during the last couple weeks of school. I got spend some time doing one of my favorite things- working with 3rd graders! Mrs. Bare at Carr Elementary contacted me about collaborating on a social studies lesson focusing on inventors. We had the best time!

Once Mrs. Bare told me which inventors to focus on, I created a QR code for each inventor that took students to a biography page, video, or other resource for that inventor. I printed each QR code out on a single sheet of paper and posted them around the school (making sure to post in places where there was a wireless signal). Students were paired up, and each pair was given an i-Pod touch. To complete the activity, students searched for the QR codes, scanned them using i-nigma, and filled in the requested information on their handout. The QR codes were also on the handout, since I wasn’t sure they would be able to travel around the school that day. The activity took over an hour- and it was great to see students intent on reading the information on each site! They even asked for more time so they could watch the accompanying videos on each site. After the research portion was done, students could then take their information and use it to create presentations to share with each other. I loved doing this activity with this great group of 3rd graders!

If you’d like the QR code printouts, student handouts, and lesson plan for this lesson just leave a comment and I’ll be glad to send it out or post it!

Below you can enjoy some pictures of students hard at work.

Jan 09

MLK Day Resources

Jan 09

We just got back from Christmas break, and soon we will be
celebrating the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday. If you’re looking for a
way to incorporate a Social Studies lesson on this topic before break,
hopefully you will find something of use in one of these resources!

I’m sure a lot of you have tons of MLK resources, but just in case, here are a few:

Scholastic’s MLK Day Resources page includes lots of info, links, and a Notebook lesson: http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/collection.jsp?id=149

Remember you can get the full “I Have a Dream” speech transcript (print and audio) on American Rhetoric: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkihaveadream.htm or on Discovery Education

This
school system has compiled a plethora (I just love that word) of
resources, including background info, blackline masters, lesson plans,
technology links, and a list of Discovery Education clips: http://www.vrml.k12.la.us/holidays/mlk/mlk.htm

Larry
Ferlazzo is an ESL teacher who compiles list of website resources for
different topics- this one is 2 years old, but has some good ones that
would be great for EC, ESL, or lower level students. For example, the
first site listed is a biography of MLK created by students that is
text, but can be read to students. http://larryferlazzo.edublogs.org/2008/12/21/the-best-websites-about-martin-luther-king/

Here are some resources from different government agencies http://www.free.ed.gov/keywords.cfm?keyword_id=954

And finally, if you search for MLK lessons on the SMART Exchange, this is what you’ll get: http://exchange.smarttech.com/search.html?m=01&&q=martin+luther+king&tab=resources&sf=d

http://exchange.smarttech.com/search.html?tab=resources&q=MLK&sbj=

Hope there’s something in here you can use in the next couple weeks! What’s your favorite MLK Day resource?

Nov 14

My (P)Interesting Obsession with Pinterest

Nov 14

Have you checked out Pinterest yet? Pinterest is a site that basically lets users create virtual pinboards. You can create different boards to keep your pins organized, and you can also browse the boards of other users. So what is a pin? According to the Pinterest site, a pin is an image you add to Pinterest. It is super easy to install the Pin It button to your toolbar in any browser by following the directions here.

Pin It button

Once you’ve installed the Pin It button, you’ll see this in your bookmark bar

Yours most likely won’t have a pink background…but that’s how I roll in my browser themes 🙂

Once you have the Pin It button installed, you’re ready to start pinning! Basically, anytime you see something you like on the web and want to remember for later, just click the Pin It button. As long as there are images on the page, Pinterest will pull all of those images and ask which you’d like to Pin. For example, the last page I pinned consisted of these images

I was able to click Pin This on the image I wanted to add to my board. The next step is choosing which board to add your pin to.

From here, I can simply choose the board I want to add to (or choose create a new one). You can see in the picture above that I chose to add this pin to the board called SMART Activities and Sites. You can also choose to add a description to your pins, and if you have your account connected to Facebook and/or Twitter, share your new pin with those followers as well.

Even if you’re not into pinning, I have observed Pinterest quickly becoming my go-to place for finding great ideas and resources for the classroom. You can look through pins without having accounts- so you can search for a keyword you’re looking for, or just look at pins in a certain category. The list below only show about half the categories available, but I wanted to make sure you saw that Education is there!

Here’s a link to the education category on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/all/?category=education, and check out a small shot of what I saw when I clicked it a few minutes ago: