Celebrating South Carolina Day

March 18th was South Carolina Day, in honor of John C. Calhoun's birthday.  In all classrooms across the state, students learned about South Carolina.

In one third grade classroom, the students independently researched South Carolina on the CultureGrams website during the reading lesson.  The teacher had posted the link in Edmodo and the students accessed the South Carolina page from the States Edition section of the website with his/her iPad.  

Then during writing, the students used his or her research to create a digital project about South Carolina.  The students were to showcase five facts about South Carolina for the second graders in either Book Creator or Explain Everything.

In a second grade classroom, the class read the book P is for Palmetto for the interactive read aloud for the day.  Then students created a Popplet with pictures and sentences about different SC symbols. The students posted his or her Popplet to the class Padlet wall.  The teacher had created a QR code to help students access the padlet site.  Then they shared their Popplets with the class from the Promethean Board.

Celebrating Dr. Seuss

This week we celebrated Dr. Seuss' books all week in honor of his birthday and NEA's Read Across America project.  The interactive read alouds all week focused on different Dr. Seuss books.  For a culminating project at the end of the week, teachers wanted to integrate an iPad project.  We had the students use the Doodle Buddy, a free drawing app, to draw his or her favorite Dr. Seuss character.  Then the students used their pictures in ChatterPix Kids to have the character come to life.  The students explained which character was their favorite and why.

Spelling App-tivities

This week, I've had the opportunity to help some classes practice their weekly spelling words on the iPads.  These app-tivities could also be used with other skills in your Word study as you practice other phonics skills, such as vowel patterns with your students.  Here's a few app-tivities to get you started:

Doodle Buddy App-tivities -

Have students rainbow write the words, where they use a different color for each letter in the word. 

Have students draw a picture (or use the stamps) to represent the word.

Play "I'm Thinking of a Word" where you give the students clues to guess the word in which you are thinking.  Have students write the word they think you are thinking of on the iPad as you give the clues.

Word Clouds App-tivity - 

Students type the spelling words in the app to create a word cloud.

QR Code App-tivitiy - 

Students scan the QR code and then unscramble the word from the letters on the screen.

I hope these spelling app-tivities will be useful in your classroom!

Word Clouds App

Have you tried the Word Clouds app by ABCya.com?  This app is free for a limited time, so I would suggest you grab this one while you can!  This app is very easy to use and creates great word clouds.  Here is a quick tutorial to get you started with this app.

Inserting Images in Google Docs

Google has several great options for inserting images in Docs.  View this short tutorial to learn how to insert images from your Google Drive and through using the Research Tool feature.

Hour of Code

All the stockings were hung by the chimney with care, and the thoughts of coding filled the air.

I had the privilege of working with 1st-5th graders last week for the hour of code.  I hope this will only be the beginning of many more coding activities to come for these students.  We visited code.org for the great coding activities and games.  They have courses and games for ages four and up.  The Angry Birds and Frozen games were a great hit with the students.  

We also enjoyed this coding game in the Google Santa Tracker.

It is not too late to begin coding with your class.  Try out these awesome activities!  Happy coding!

Getting Started with Google Docs and Drive

Are you ready to get started with Google Docs and Drive?  This presentation will help you as you begin your journey.