Monday, September 30, 2013

October Materials for Day and Night

We skipped September's unit this year and jumped right into October's unit on Look Up!.  Here are some of the activities that we have completed, or will complete as the month progresses that relate to items you see at night or during the day.  My class is loving arts and craft activities, most of our literacy and learning concepts are being imbedded into art projects.

This is October 2012's issue of Let's Find Out by Scholastic.  (It has free access right now to all issues, I don't know for how long this will last.)  This magazine ties in to items we see at night.  If you scroll down you can see Printable Activity Pages (one is related to activities you do during the day and at night) and there is an online game to play where you sort items you see during the day and at night.




I looked at The Education Center for skill sheets.  Once you sign up for a free membership and search for 'day and night' in My Mailbox you will find 9 different worksheets, minibooks, poems that relate to day and night.


Friday, April 26, 2013

SMARTNotebook and Extreme Collaboration AddOn Beta

I recently learned about Extreme Collaboration (XC) AddOn Beta for SMARTNotebook 11.  XC allows you to use any device that can connect to the Internet to be able to interact with SMARTNotebook files.  You log onto a website (add2nb.com), enter the personalized number id and you can send up to 10 messages to appear on the SMARTBoard within the Notebook file that you are currently working in.

Once I understood how it worked I thought of some great ways to use it with my class.  I thought about using it for spelling words, and rhyming words.  I then went into SMARTNotebook and created 2 files to support April's rhyming units in the Elementary Band.  Each file has a cover page, instructions, and then 4-6 pages of pictures to represent various rhyming words.  In the second picture you can see, what my students did with their devices (iPads and iTouches).


 

This is the file for -ive rhyming words:
http://exchange.smarttech.com/details.html?id=74bca383-7e9c-4f74-b841-fb8877884d83



This is the file for -ake rhyming words:
http://exchange.smarttech.com/details.html?id=430fb925-aba2-4d10-8e56-d679649acd80


If you want to download XC AddOn Beta for SMARTNotebook 11 you can go here to download it:
http://exchange.smarttech.com/details.html?id=91367205-678c-4aae-accf-966497fc2f8f
It is very easy to install and activate.


Sunday, April 14, 2013

Planting a Rainbow and Planting Seeds

My students are going to be planting seeds this week - hopefully they will be up in time for Mother's Day and our gift will be all done!

IF they do not grow, I found this poem:

I planted some seeds in hopes that they'd grow,
Something went wrong, I just don't know...
Instead of some flowers, it's a cupful of dirt.
I love you - I hope your feelings aren't hurt!
HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

It is from: http://eberhartsexplorers.blogspot.ca/2011/05/happy-mothers-day.html

As a lead in activity I am going to be reading "Planting a Rainbow" by Lois Ehlert.  As luck would have it, I found this book on Bookflix (all Ontario school boards have free access through your school board and OSAPAC).  If you have access to this resource, it is under "Animals and Nature" and then it is on page 29-32.

Abilipad

I recently was able to purchase 4 iPads for my class, and I have 2 more coming in June.  This means that we will soon be an 1:1 iPad class. I have been trying to figure out how to use the iPads in the best way for my students.


We are currently using, and loving, Abilipad.  I have found some great ways to use Ablipad to support the use of Unique Learning System.  Typically, I have my iPad connected via a VGA Adapter to the SMARTBoard so that I can model what the expectations are and how to use the app.

We are using it, mostly, for reinforcing rhyming skills, my students have to verbally label the picture, think about what beginning sound it has, and then spell the word. I tried to recreate my Clicker 5 activity with Abilipad (see the last picture of this post).  

I have discovered the use of Dropbox and it is so easy to share files with this app, I can upload my notebooks/keyboards from Abilipad into Dropbox and instantly my students can access them on their own iPads. 

Here are some screen shots of how we are been using Abilipad:

This is a screen shot of for -ive rhyming, I created a variety of pages in the notebook that has different pictures on each page of a rhyming word for -ive (hive, dive, five, drive, jive and live).


Here is the same idea but for -ake rhyming.  Again, I created a variety of pages in the notebook that has different pictures on each page of a rhyming word for -ake (cake, bake, make, take, brake, wake, fake, lake, quake, and snake)


This was a keyboard that I created back in March for creating sentences that support the vocabulary for March's unit.


Monday, April 1, 2013

Files for April

With March Break and Easter, we are doing an extra week of the March unit but I did create all the files today.

Here are the rhyming worksheets created in Boardmaker Studio.

Here is the beginning sound file for SMART Notebook, you need to have SMART Notebook 11 to use this file.  I tried it at school and it does not work in SMART Notebook 10 :(

 

Here is the Word Mat that I created in Boardmaker Plus, work and together are on the page twice once as a title and once as a word (I could not find another title)


Here is the set of April Word Work created in Boardmaker Studio.

This is the strip that I print off and put on the top of each desk. Sorry no link!