Technology Tip Tuesday!

Linking up for Tech Tip Tuesday.....love this! My favorite thing ever is finding ways to incorporate technology into my lessons! Here are some ideas for you!

Host a Skype Story Time! See my post HERE to read more about it!

Record reviews/lessons for your students to study at home online! See my post HERE to read about it!

Use the Star Walk app on your iPads or iPod Touches to look for constellations in the sky! This takes the coolness factor in your classroom and kicks it up about 10 notches! Click HERE to read more!

O-FISH-ALLY First Graders!

This is the theme of my door this year and I've received a ton of compliments on it! Check it out yo!

 

My door last year was very Pinterest-popular -- check it out HERE!

2012-2013 Classroom Pictures!

Wow, first I apologize to all 500+ followers for being MIA! Life is really busy at the moment....we are in the process of building a house so that is consuming our lives at the moment! I do have some new and exciting tech ideas to share with your for the new school year, so follow along and stay tuned!

Good news this year! I moved back into the main building! I had been out in a portable classroom for the past 2 years, and while I loved the space, I hated being out there. So to celebrate, I decided to go with a brand new classroom theme -- SEUSS!!

Student tables and cubbies

Back wall with student computers, bulletin boards for student work, and Word wall.

Carpet area and library....and SMART Board! I really wanted the library to be the "heart" of the classroom.

View from the door

Carpet area looking back at the door

My desk area

Books are organized in baskets from Dollar Tree (online)

Another view of Smart board and my CAFE Menu will be to the right of it.

Word Work area for Daily 5

Student book tubs

One of the listening stations

Small group learning area...still need a few more seat cushions!

Read to Someone area

Happiness! I loved the way my room turned out!

I will post pictures of my completed door soon!

PBL with Earth Day Music Video!

Every year, I have my students make a music video to Jack Johnson's 3 Rs song.....they create the ideas for the video, I produce it, and we show it during lunch to the student body. Here's last years video....be sure to check back for this year's creation and also a tutorial on how to do the "green screen" feature in iMovie!!

 Please visit MY CLASS BLOG HERE to see last year's video!

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: