Poll and Form

I created a poll to substitute for an activity called 4 corners. I make a statement and students have to decide if they strongly agree, agree, strongly disagree, or disagree and go to the corner that matches. It's a visual and physical way for students to state their opinions and reasons. I would be interested in trying this and the four corner activity and seeing which students enjoy more. I think some students like to actually see the people in the corners and get the movement, but I could see students liking to add their comments instead of having to share it out loud. That would be less threatening. I also wonder if I can determine who hasn't answered a question if I'm missing some answers. I think they students would really like texting in the answers, and I would be interested in seeing how many of my students bring cells to school. I guess they can use the laptop if they don't have one.



The form I created I plan to use during my writer's workshop as a reflection and goal setting tool. It will also give me feedback on what I can teach next to best help my students. Being able to access this easily with my Ipad during this time will be great. I had students fill out paper copy sheets similar to this the last couple of years. I would keep them in a binder with all of my notes from conferencing. It was very bulky and inconvenient. I am very excited for the use of my Ipad, google docs (where I can view student writing), and forms like this.

Infographics

I used easel.ly for my infographic. It was very easy to use. I liked the set-up and many options for objects, shapes, texts, etc. There was also an easy way to upload photos that I wanted to use. I didn't like that I couldn't copy and paste text or pictures from one program or website to my handout. I had to download a picture and save it to my computer before transferring it to my creation. Something very handy that I like (but didn't use) is that if someone makes their creation public, you are able to use it as a starting point and change some of the graphics or text to fit your message. So instead of creating  flowchart from scratch, you could find one and change the information or add/delete graphics.

I enjoyed using it to create a handout that I would use to build background information for the novel Iqbal. I would probably prefer to have my students use it as a project to demonstrate what they know. I also think it could be fun to use during a poetry unit where they could combine graphics with their writing and be creative with it.
easel.ly

Cloud Computing- Perfect for Writer's Workshop

I have been using google docs since Mounds View switched to Gmail. I thought it would be PERFECT to have my students have accounts for their writer's workshop papers. They could share their work with their peers and have peers leave comments for their peer conferences. I have been waiting for MV to decide if we are allowing students underage to have access to this in my classroom. I have also been looking at using turnitin.com. I don't know which is better or if it's even possible to use either at the 6th grade level. It would make things so much easier and useful for my students and me to view and share their work.

The presentation below that I created was used during Summer STEAM. I created it and was quickly able to share it with the other teachers since we were all teaching the same lesson to different groups of kids that day.

Summer STEAM Presentation

Storybird: Plot Elements

I used Storybird to create a short story adapted from P. D. Eastman's Are you my Mother?. I was wanting to use this as quick example of the different parts of a short story as a brief introduction or review in my writer's workshop. I read Gina's reflection of using Zooburst, and I thought putting together the whole story piece by piece sounded time consuming. Looking back, I think I may have preferred that because it was difficult to piece a story together using art that was already created. I also wasn't able to figure out how to choose art from different illustrators to use in the same short story. (I saw examples of it, but I couldn't figure it out.) I also wish that I could have chosen different fonts, one for the story and one for the plot element explanation.


Mama?(Adapted P. D. Eastman's Are you my Mother?) by ecsnyder on Storybird

Tagxedo and Studyblue

I am doing my assignments a little out of order...
I saw the cool image created by Karen Fox, and I agree that it would be a cool thing to put on a website. I also think it would be a fun activity for students to create an image on tagxedo that is made of words and an image to represent a character in Iqbal. I also love the idea of using it as a review for them to show what they have learned about a topic by using words and a shape that connect their learning to the topic that was discussed. I chose a shape out of the options on the website, but I saw that there was a place to add a shape or turn it into a word. I just decided that I should experiment with those options and re-created it into L.A. (Language Arts)

The website was very user-friendly. I also used studyblue.com to create flashcards. This was also extremely easy to use. I made flashcards for different types of figurative language. I am unable to post them right now. I think it's because when I signed up, our school was not listed in their database yet. It said that it will check to make sure my school exists and then get back to me. It's not letting me add students or embed my cards. I am assuming that if I link it, that won't work because it is password protected. I really like the site though. It would be easy to create cards to quiz my students, and it would also be very easy for my students to create their own cards.