Welcome back to school! This is me setting up my freshly painted classroom! I am so excited to begin the school year!

Science Come Alive with Time-Lapse Photography

We are studying the life cycle of insects. I was disappointed that the caterpillars would form into chrysalides over the weekend when my students could not see them. I decided to try time-lapse photography to document the transformation and it was awesome! We also recorded the transformation from pupa to an adult butterfly. I used 1 minute intervals to document this. Next time I will use 30 seconds to document the change because it happened so fast. The kids were thrilled to watch the change over and over again. We documented our learning with a digital story created using iMovie. I hope you enjoy it! 

Compound Word QR Codes

Each child had a QR Code printed out that I created using images and a document link created in my Google Drive. The students scanned their codes to discover what half of a compound word they had. Then they had to locate the classmate who had the other half of their word. Once the students found their partner they had to write a sentence suing the compound word. They wrote their sentences using Doodle Buddy.

Compound Word QR Codes

Show Me App for Math

We used the Show Me app as a learning tool and an assessment. After learning how to use ten sticks and ones dots to add and regroup, pairs of students had to "show me" how they solved addition problems. I posted sample to our class web page so they children could refer to it from home.

This week we used My  Story to document the journey of our butterfly life cycle unit. I took some of the pictures and shared them via airdrop. The kids added 1 or 2 of their own pictures and illustrations. The children read their stories in ibooks. I then shared the stories with their families through e-mail. My class was very proud of their work.

My Story Maker Butterfly Stories

Kahoot!

Watch the first graders in action as they use a student response system app called Kahoot!

https://getkahoot.com/ 

I tried my first augmented reality lesson. We are working on words with the "ar" spelling pattern so The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds fits right in since it's about an artist. The story is about a girl who thinks she can not draw only to find out that once unleashed, her creativity takes her farther than she ever imagined. This is a story that fits right into my group of kiddos since many express frustration at certain tasks such as writing or some of the challenging math concepts we work on. We read the story, discussed some higher level thinking type questions (written on dots of course), and then illustrated our own dots (printed from http://colarapp.com/). We used the coLAR app to make our illustrations literally jump off the page. The kids were so excited to see their work in 3-D. I think we will also use this app to practice spelling and high-frequency words. I plan to connect this lesson to our individual SMART goals as well!