The Dot Project -- Digital Art!

I read about The Dot Project and thought I'd try it out with my first graders. We read the book The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds. This is an inspiring story about a student who doesn't think they can draw and ends up making great art. The students were ready to make their own art after reading this book!

Drawing on iPads would have been super fun, but we don't have any in our classroom. So we went to the computer lab and used Kid Pix to draw our very own dots. They are all unique and beautiful. The kids really enjoyed this and I'm sure we'll be doing more digital art in the future! Just another easy way to incorporate some tech into your day!

Nonfiction Text Features

We've been spending the week learning about text features of nonfiction books. This is coinciding PERFECTLY with writing "All About Books" ala Lucy Calkins.

We made this anchor chart...a great visual for the kiddos.

And today, the students dug deep into their own nonfiction books and looked for the specific features we've been learning this week.

To download, click the picture.

Quietube -- A Safer Way to Youtube

In the words of Junie B. : WOWIE. I learned so much over the last 2 days at the annual MACE conference, which is a tech conference for teachers. I hope to share some of the things I learned and how I'm applying it to my classroom with you all through my blog.

One website I was introduced to was Quietube....which allows you to watch youtube videos without all the "crap" -- related videos, comments, etc. Because every once in awhile an inappropriate related video or comment will be right near the video you are trying to use with students. This gets rid of all of that...plus it's just a lot less distracting.

So you go to quietube.com , and all you need to do is drag the button to your toolbar. Then when you have a youtube video you want to share, go to the video on youtube and click the quietube button on your toolbar and you'll go from this:

To this: