Samples, Samples, Samples

I love to take time out to post the fun and cool ideas my fellow teachers are doing in their classrooms. It is always a great way to inspire and encourage one another as East Noble Staff. Please comment if you have other ideas or are inspired by these samples.

Mrs. Erexson
Second grade teacher at Wayne Center, Mrs. Erexson, has been really excited about the possibilities that her iPads hold for gathering information about her students' learning. Through her classroom set of iPads, she's able to essentially able to meet with every student because she gets to see their responses all from the convenience of her iPad and PC.

Using 30 Hands, her student was able to take a picture and report a quick summary about the book. This allows Mrs. Erexson to conference with more students than ever before. Does she have to listen to every video? That's probably not even necessary, but it allows her to do quick and regular checks with students. This activity of taking a picture of the text and recording responses is becoming a regular part of Mrs. Erexson's day, not a special occasion.

Here her students utilized Pic Collage to report about their reading. Here the student took a picture of her book and recorded the strategy of asking questions on her Pic Collage. The students then emailed their responses to her. Using Pic Collage to record reading strategies is a simple and fast way that students can make the connection between their reading and transferring it over to a digital project. 

Geoboard is what I consider the saver of headaches! I can't recall how many times I told students to quit flipping rubber-bands with real geoboards. Mrs. Erexson gave the students the direction to create line segments. She was more curious to see what students would create. The results were pleasantly surprising! 

Mrs. McKibben

Over the weekend, I created a video and a sample on using Chatterpix Kids. I applaud Mrs. McKibben, Fourth grade teacher at Rome City, for jumping right in and being my pioneer with this app. The students were studying Indiana history. Specifically, they were studying the Fench and Indian War. The students had to speak from the perspective of Native Americans or the French. With only 30 seconds to speak, the students had to think quickly and pack as much information in as they could. I would say that they were able to provide a wealth of information about how much they learned to Mrs. McKibben. Also, they had a lot of fun doing it as I just happened to be walking by her classroom  as they were finishing up. They were extremely excited!

Mrs. Yoder

Mrs. Yoder, first grade teacher at Avilla Elementary, also jumped in and tried Chatterpix Kids on her class set of iPod Touches. Her students tried the same author's purpose example that I came up with over the weekend. She also reported that her students had a lot of fun and that the whole process did not take a large amount of time.

Mr. Yoder

I also wanted to take some time to report about how Kindergarten is going at Rome City as I'm meeting with them every week. We continued our work using Story on the iPod Touch. I sent the students more pictures for action words. They were able to successfully download them to their devices and add to their Story project from last week. We had a lot of fun! 

(Does not work on Chrome)