Already Friday! Today went by so fast. We again ran out of time to blog as a class. But, we did get on Twitter to see who tweeted or favorited our comments. We continued our tweets with a class in Texas and a class in Chicago...pretty neat. We also saw all of the parents that retweeted or favorited our tweets...thank you so much for talking with us!
We talked a bit about Groundhog's Day today and made a craft to go with the short study. We shall see what those groundhogs do on Sunday! Be sure to check Twitter, I posted a collage with a few pictures there. They love to see themselves on the screen! Don't forget, Monday is our field trip to the museum...we will leave promptly at 9:10 and return just in time for lunch at 11:20. Only a few days this week...but man have we get a lot of learning in so far. We checked out a new app today- Create a Scene. This is a fun app that has lots of capabilities. But, today, I taught a number story lesson using it. We created a "scene" and then saved the scene and put it into the ShowMe app and we were able to write the actual number problem and talk through it. Check it out on our Twitter. The app is being loaded on to all of the student iPads and they will get a chance to make their own soon! We will see what other cool curriculum things we can do with this app! Today we also took the NWEA for the second time. While I have not compared the data critically yet, the scores are looking amazing!! It was a bit of a long day as far as testing goes, we did split the reading testing into two parts: one in the morning and one in the afternoon. But- it is a lot of hard thinking!! Maybe they will all sleep well tonight :)
More about today...see I told you we have been busy! We talked more about dinosaurs. Today we talked about what they eat and how we know what certain types of dinosaurs eat just by looking at their teeth! And, be sure to check Twitter frequently. I have been posting more pics and little updates. It is really easy and quick for me to post a picture and a blurb on Twitter, so I am using it more and more. You can set your phone to alert you when we post...if this interests you :) It is a bit easier that getting on to the website to check the blog every few days. And, "tweet" with us...let us know you are out there, the kids love to read them! It makes this communication tool more effective and the students learn how to use it as a means of real communication....ya know, next gen style! We had another good day of learning. We started our day with Reader's Workshop- using eSpark and Raz-Kids. eSpark has been wonderful- a great addition to our classroom. I am completely amazed by the growth taking place for EVERY student. We will be testing again next week, and we will be able to start to compare the growth and see true results and we will update student goals from there. Raz-Kids has been a great addition as well. Many students are using it at home- yeah! They seem to love being able to use their iPads and Raz during their "work with teacher" rotation as well. A nice change of pace sometimes.
Today we decided to do a quick mural to go along with our space learning. We created stars yesterday and had the idea of making a mural with other space things. So, we started today, working in small groups. Each small group had a particular part of the space scene. Each group found books to do their "research" and talk about their plan. Amazing collaboration...check out examples below. Then, I gave them tons of art materials and let their imagination run. Some groups used crayons and markers, others used paint, some used construction paper. It was very neat to see all the different approaches and how each group worked together...amazing things happened from these 5 and 6 year old kiddos! And- we also tried Book Creator today. Some students decided to use it during Writer's Workshop and others chose to continue writing as we do each day. Book Creator is essentially a story telling app. They can draw their picture and then type their sentences...was pretty impressed how well they did with a very short explanation. We will incorporate this here and there as the year progresses. See- a busy day, a fun day...always the case in Mrs. Girbach;s kindergarten classroom. AND...No school tomorrow, Friday...but that may be old news by the time you read this, since I am blogging at 10:30pm :) Well, a short week, but surely a busy week. We have been working hard, trying to fit all of the fun space activities in, along with all of the amazing learning that is happening. It is only Wednesday, but check out all the learning that has taken place on our space KWL! The students seem to really love doing these charts lately- they get excited when they find the answer to something they were wanting to know. It has really allowed them to drive their own learning a little bit- which is awesome! Another cool thing that happened today- we have a Kindergarten class from Texas that is following us on Twitter, and we "tweeted" with them today! They are new to Twitter- check out our Twitter page to see what we talked about. Hopefully we will get another post to you by the end of the week...we have more fun planned for tomorrow!
Well, we finished our first full week back! What a fun week it was. We did SO MANY new activities, we learned a ton, and we can't wait to do it again next week with a space theme. We have quite a lot to share with you today. Take a look at a few of the videos below- we used the Explain Everything app to draw a penguin. I asked the students to tell me a few things they knew about penguins as they drew. You will see that each student took a different approach.
What a great week I had being the teacher of this class. I tried quite a few new things with these kiddos and they were on board with me and did an amazing job. It was so cool to see each student working at their own pace, acquiring knowledge they didn't know. We learned lots about what apps work for what activities and what things we will change for next time. I am excited to try these things again with the space unit, and try more new ideas too! Having a blast everyday with my kids!
We used the Show Me app to draw a picture of where penguins live (see below). It was fun to draw on the iPad instead of paper- there were lots of colors to choose from. We learned more about shapes in math today. We compared and contrasted two triangles. We did another great job thinking critically- check it out below. It was snowing a lot when we went outside today- we thought it was so cool. We also started to make a penguin out of paper, we will finish later this week. We used our iPads today: We used them for math and reading eSpark, some people used them to make an Explain Everything video about our math lesson- shapes. See below for a few examples... Also in math, we made shapes out of people and string- check out the pictures below. We also completed more of our KWL chart, we talked about things we want to know more about. Mrs. Girbach said that we did an amazing job using our critical thinking skills- look at the things we want to know! We also did an activity with how penguins move. Some people recorded eSpark videos for math and reading- we are getting really good at this. We had so much fun today! We learned a little about penguins today. We started a KWL chart, check it out below. We have more iPads in our classroom now...we have ONE for EVERY student!! We played Roll and Record during math today, some of us got a chance to teach. During Reader's Workshop, we talked about the letter D and the sound it makes at the beginning of words. See the picture below where we were able to circle the things that started with Dd on the iPad and we could see it on the SmartBoard...technology is so cool! Sara was the busy bee today. As always, we had FUN!
I have spent a few hours this weekend...while my kids were sleeping :) re-vamping my Penguin unit coming up this week. While we do quite a bit of work with our iPads on a daily basis, I felt like our Next Generation classroom was still lacking a bit. We have an amazing amount of technology and we feel very lucky. However, Next Gen doesn't just mean great technology, it means critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration. It means allowing the students to drive their learning and giving them an opportunity to show what they know and explain it in their own words. I've been doing a lot of research and lot of thinking for the last few months. So- this week, I will be challenging the students in many ways, using the apps that we have become familiar with. I will be challenging them beyond basic thinking skills for 5 and 6 year olds, and pushing the envelope a bit. I am super excited to try this out, as I am sure there will be bumps in the road while we get used to these 21st century learning skills, we will make it and we will all learn along the way. Be sure to check our blog this week for sure...we will update you and post a few details about our new learning. Can't wait to get started!!
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AuthorKristin Girbach Archives
September 2018
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