Summer Learning

I love learning!  How about you?

I always encourage my students to continue learning over the summer.  I send home a summer learning packet that includes activities that reinforce skills we learned throughout the year.  I like to include hot spots to visit, and interesting ways to learn outdoors.  I also encourage everyone to "Keep Reading!"

How do you encourage summer learning with your class?

A Technological Inspiration

I recently finished reading Kathy Cassidy's new book,Connected from the Start: Global Learning in the Primary Grades.  Kathy Cassidy does an excellent job of inspiring classroom teachers to incorporate technology into the classroom.  Cassidy's language throughout the text helps teachers relate to the struggles and successes of integrating technology into everyday learning.  She even shares a multitude of up to date ways that she integrates technology into her first grade classroom.  I love her realistic and inspiring message of, "If I Can Do It, So Can You" (10).  

Check out Kathy Cassidy's Classroom Blog to see some of her uses of technology in action!

photo of Ms. Cassidy's Classroom Blog

I also enjoyed looking at her personal webpage, Primary Preoccupation.  Check it out for some great teaching ideas and resources!

photo of Kathy Cassidy's webpage

Mary Had a Digital Story

Digital storytelling is a new aspect of writing stories for my students.  The children in my class love watching digital stories.  So it seemed like a natural addition to the student learning in my classroom.  We recently read the book, Mary Had a Little Lamp, by Jack Lechner.

  

It is a cute spin on the traditional nursery rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb.  The story ends with, "Now Mary has a toaster."  The children were excited to brainstorm where Mary would bring her toaster.  After creating a list of ideas, each child illustrated a page for the story.  Here is an initial draft of our digital story...

I created this digital story using VoiceThread.  VoiceThread is a quick and easy way to use images, text, or voice to share videos with others.  It can be used with children of all ages or amongst adults.  I simply uploaded photos of my student's work.  After a couple of clicks, all of the photos were uploaded.  Most of the photos uploaded in the proper order for the digital story, but I easily dragged the other photos around on the storyboard to change some of them.  Then my students' and I prepared to record comments.  Low and behold the technology went on the fritz!  I'm not quite sure which set it in motion; the server or the microphone on the laptop.  Nonetheless I restarted the computer and hoped for the best.  I was able to have a couple children record comments, but this is all I have so far.  So stay tuned for the tales of Mary and her toaster!

F.Y.I.:  If you are interested in creating your own VoiceThread check out thess tutorials.

Frozen in Time

This week in class I learned about Voki.  I decided to check it out and play around. I stumbled upon an avatar that looks similar to one of the characters from the hit movie Frozen.  The songs have captivated children and adults.  No matter where I go someone is singing the songs out loud.  Here is the Voki I created...

You can create a free account at Voki and begin creating your own Voki right now!  The tutorial below is a great resource to help you create and publish your Voki

Our Summer Bucket List

A Summer Bucket List is a list of things that children and/or adults hope to accomplish over the summer.  I stumbled upon this idea on the internet, and introduced it to my class.  They loved every part of it!  I started out with a mini-lesson explaining what a summer bucket list was, and they were immediately shouting out ideas.  I recorded their ideas on chart paper as well as recorded some of my own.

Then the children created a summer bucket list of their own.  These lists became a rough draft, which the children later transferred to their final draft on a template of a sand pail.  

We are going to hang these up in our room for our end of the year celebration with the children's families.  Then, I plan to add them to the summer learning gift that I plan to send home with the children on one of the last days of school.  Stay posted for more information of my summer learning gift.

Keeping Kids Engaged and Educated

We have reached the last two weeks of school, and it is becoming tricky to keep the kids on task and interested in learning.  Now, add some hot days in a classroom without air conditioning and it's even harder.  So I have had to become the master of entertainment, excitement, and education.  I'm guessing that I am not the only teacher encountering this in their classroom at the end of the school year so I have decided to share a few things that are working in my classroom.

1. Include lots of brain breaks:  One thing that works best with my class is music and movement.  My kindergarten class LOVES songs by The Learning Station.
2. Provide lots of student directed learning:  I try to keep my lessons as short and direct as possible, and give the children more time to work together or independently.
3. EXTRA recess:  Every kid loves more time to run and play outside!
4. Create, Discover, Explore!:  I have been including more creative ways for kids to learn, which include digital tools as well as art projects related to our writing or reading.
5. Add technology:  We visited the computer lab for math this week!  The kids had the chance to practice some of their addition and subtraction skills on ABCya.

These are just a few examples that I have used in my kindergarten classroom.  I hope you are able to modify them to use in your classroom so your student's stay engaged in learning until their last day of school.

Look in the sky...it's a Storybird!

Storybird is a great website to encourage storytelling with your students.  The website has a collection of illustrations that can be combined in order to make a visual story.  The author can type in the words to a story as well as organize how the illustrations are presented.  The website also allows you to read many different stories that have been created by others.

Tonight in class, Liz, Jenn, and I created our first Storybird story.  There was a variety of artwork that caught our eye, but we decided to use the artwork of Hedgehog and Co.  We collaborated to create an if/then story similar to Laura Numeroff's If You Give a... series.  It was a lot of fun, but frustrating when we realized our story got deleted.  Despite our mishap, we were able to quickly recreate it.  You can check it out below.  I hope you like it!