App-tastic Ideas for Building the Classroom Community

With school beginning just around the corner, I've been thinking of some app-tastic ideas to begin the school year.  Each year as I had a fresh group of students, I always began the year with classroom community building activities to help everyone get to know one another.  I felt this was a valuable time for me as the teacher to learn more about my students and for  them to learn a little about each other.  As we built our classroom community, I was always hunting for the small connections, the ways to show the students "you matter" and "I care."  
I thought I would show some ways to take the normal get to know each other activities and add a technology twist to them.  

Students can create a Popplet to show some of their favorite things.  We drew our pictures in a drawing app and then imported them into our Popplets.  Students could also draw five favorite things on small squares of paper with crayons and then take photos of their drawings to use in their popplets.

With Skitch, students can take a selfie or a photo of each other and then add adjectives to describe themselves around their photo.

 With Tellagami, students can create a gami to share fun things they did this summer, some of their favorite things, or their goals for the upcoming year.

With Word Clouds, students could create a word cloud telling the class about their favorite things.

Students could use ChatterPix Kids to tell about the best part of their summer.  When I asked my niece to make a ChatterPix about the best part of her summer, she made this little singing wave. 

Here is a handout with a few more app-tastic ideas for getting to know one another with a technology twist.  Click the handout below to download a copy for yourself.

After your class has completed a few of the activities above, combine some of the student projects together in an app like iMovie or Book Creator to showcase everyone's work.  The students will love revisiting these projects in the upcoming weeks as they learn more about each other.