Bringing Vocabulary Practice into the 21st Century

Here's a quick post to share something that was a huge hit today with my kiddos. Building vocabulary is a large part of our reading instruction. We talk about the words, make sentences with them, have collaborative conversations about them them, write about them...you get the picture. We do a lot with our vocabulary, but today I wanted to shake things up a bit. Enter....FakeiPhoneText.com.

If you haven't used this awesome website, you have to go check it out. It is really easy. Just type in a conversation, hit create, and your text conversation opens in a new web window. You can save the picture using your right click or copy the web link to post onto Edmodo, email, or wherever.

We have a class set of Kindles, so my students used them to create their fake text conversation. The only stipulation was that it had to make sense and include at least three vocabulary words. Once finished, they copied the URL of the fake text and posted it to Edmodo. Success! This activity was just the change we needed right now, and it provided the practice they needed.

It also gave me some very good feedback as to who was using the words correctly and who was not. Here are a few of our creations:

I can think of so many uses for this website, but I really loved using it for vocabulary practice today. Maybe next week we'll incorporate it in some other subjects. 

Camellia Net: Alabama's Digital Library

Alabama readers, check this out! If you're looking for e-books Camellia Net is the place to go. Camellia Net (Get it?...our state flower) is Alabama's Digital Library which connects libraries all across the state. All you need is a library card to sign up and you can borrow books. I first heard about this service from a friend at a Christmas party last year, but didn't look at it right away. I then got busy and forgot about it until yesterday. My sister reminded me and even went through the site with me, so I decided to give it a try on my Kindle Fire HD. Here's what I found:

Go to the site, and choose your library. To sign in, type in your library card number.I had to do a little treasure hunting to actually find my card!

Search in the search box, or browse by genre.

You're allowed to borrow five books at a time. Each title has an icon in the upper right corner. If the icon is darkened, it is available for check out. If it is gray, you can place it on hold and an email will be sent to you when it is available. 

Tap the book you'd like to borrow and tap "Borrow." 

You'll be given two options: Download or Read in Browser. I chose to download my book and was sent to the Amazon store where I had to choose which device to have the book delivered to. You can also see in the bottom corner that it shows I have two books checked out. After you've finished reading, you can just return the book.

If you're like me, you've probably heard of this before and maybe got a little side-tracked and forgot about this awesome service. Well, here's your reminder! Go log in now before you forget :)

If you're still reading and from another state, congratulations!!! I didn't want to leave you out, so I will tell you that I did a quick Google search and found that most states have a similar system in place.

Geometry Galore!

I was so excited to finally make it to the geometry section in our math book a few weeks ago. That is, until my kiddos gave me that worried look at the beginning of the chapter. I could tell they were nervous about these concepts and knew I needed to get busy! Enter these awesome resources that I made/found:

Looking for apps? Geometry Quest is a HUGE hit in my classroom! My kids absolutely adore this game, and I love that they're getting a constant review of lines, angles, shapes, etc...There is a lite version, which is what we started with, but my kids were so engaged that I bought the app. WELL worth $1.99! 

Source: teacherspayteachers.com via Farrah on Pinterest

We constantly play Guess My Number, a game in which the teacher thinks of a number and the students ask questions with yes/no answers to try and figure out the number. So when I found this free Guess Who? game about shapes, I knew my kiddos would love it!

We love "I have, who has" games! In my class we race to see how quickly we can complete the game and if we can beat the previous score. This game is a quick, fun review that encourages students to read geometry terms correctly. You can find it in my store here.

I created these task cards for a center. The students follow the directions on the front, then turn them over to check. You can find them in my store here.

This is another center activity I created to help familiarize students with the correct ways to name lines, line segments, and angles. They read what is on the card and choose the correct answer. Scanning the QR code tells students whether or not the choose correctly. You can get it here. 

We've been having a great time learning about geometry now. Hopefully you can use some of them, too!

Pic Collage

Apple    Amazon

This is a great little FREE photo collage app that I found last night and tested with the kiddos today during science. What can you do with a photo collage app, you ask? We made collages of opaque, transparent, and translucent objects today. It was so much fun to see the kids learning the "tricks" of the app and showing one another, not to mention seeing them figure out which items to take pictures of. Here are a few examples of their work:

   

This was such a fun learning activity, and the app is really simple to use. When students open it, this screen appears:

The stickers, text, and background options were pretty popular with my kiddos. Items on the page can be turned and sized using the standard pinching gestures. Once finished, students emailed their collages to our class email account. I can't wait to use this again soon! Some ideas I have are to make collages of:

• real life examples of planes (we're starting geometry soon)
• acute, obtuse, and right angles around our school
• items that are insulators
• items that are conductors
• equivalent forms of money ($1.00 shown in several different ways)

Have you ever used this app or one like it in your class? Please comment and share an idea!

Must-Have Kindle Apps for the Classroom

The addition of Kindle Fires to my classroom has totally transformed our learning! We still have a lot to learn about them, but here are some of my favorite apps and how we're using them.

Kids Doodle

Kids Doodle is a free app that records what you draw and plays it back to you as a movie. We started using this one today in place of our individual white boards and markers. During many lessons (especially math), I'll have students draw or write quick answers on white boards and then show me what they've written. This app allows students to do this in a fun, colorful way. Very motivating!

AB Math

AB Math is a great app for practicing math facts. There are other games on it as well, but I really like that the students can chose which set(s) of facts they practice. I love this because now my students' fact practice can be easily differentiated. I got it for free as one of the Kindle daily deals, but it is well worth the $0.99 price.

ES File Explorer

ES File Explorer is another free app that is really more for my use right now, but I have it on all my Kindles. It's a must have if you plan to side load apps from the Android market.Here's a great tutorial for side loading.  Installing this app allowed me to install the dolphin browser and flash player on my devices. 

Dolphin Browser

We use the Dolphin browser, rather than Silk, for all of our web browsing because it allows us to use sites that rely on flash player such as Spelling City, Fun Brain, Accelerated Reader, etc...I also love that this browser makes bookmarking easy, saves passwords, and has add-ons, like ScreenCut (which allows you to take pictures of websites) and Evernote WebClipper (which lets you save sites into Evernote. Here is my favorite tutorial for setting up flash player and dolphin on your Kindle Fire HD. 

Skitch

This multi-platform app is part of the Evernote family and works seamlessly with Evernote. It allows you to take pictures and annotate on them. You can also start with a blank page and type, write, highlight, etc...We're using Skitch to make classroom charts and "write" answers for our grammar exercises. We've also used it during small group instruction for "writing." Basically, anything that kids can write on paper, they can do on Skitch. Here's a sample of a chart we started:

Evernote

Evernote is a note taking app that allows you to capture images, audio, and websites into your document. You can even share your notes via email or Edmodo. We use this app in much the same way that we use Skitch, but we prefer Evernote when typing. It allows you to make a checklist or a numbered list. We recently used it during reading instruction to create a list of the events in our story. 

How about you? Is there a favorite app you have for your Kindle Fire? I'd love to hear how you use it. If you're an Edmodo user, feel free to join my Kindle Fires in the Classroom group here to share ideas. 

Getting Started with Evernote in the Classroom

One of the first apps I downloaded onto our class set of Kindle Fire HDs was Evernote. We were in need of a way to compose thank you letters, and previously found out through trial and error that Google Docs will not work on our devices, even using Dolphin browser. "I'll go home and figure something out tonight for us to use," I told the kiddos. Enter Evernote: Evernote is a multi-platform app that allows you create and share notes easily. The notes can include typing, pictures, audio, and can be tagged and organized. It's such an easy app to use, we were set up and using it in less then 15 minutes. Here's how:

Step 1:
Download and install the app on your device. Open it and begin to create your account. All my students used our class gmail account plus their name as the email. For example, they typed "mrskilgosclass+studentname@gmail.com. Their username was my name plus their class number, and their password was the same.

 

Step 2: There is a quick tutorial that Evernote guides you through, then you can open the app and begin using it. Your screen will probably look like this: You can swipe across to reveal your notes and your notebooks. To get started on a new note, tap New Note. 

Step: 3: Begin composing your note. Our first notes were titled "test" and the kids literally just typed a bunch of funny stuff to begin with and to learn how to use the app.

 

Step 4: Save and/or send your note. Click the checkmark to go back to the Evernote home screen. This will also save your note. To share your note via email or Edmodo, tap on it and then tap the share symbol circled in pink below. 

That's it! Simple to use, easy to learn, and has many useful functions! In a later post, I'll discuss ways we're using it in our classroom.

New Kindle Fires!!!!

After a pretty horrible weekend, I went into school Monday to discover that my class set of Kindles had arrived! We were so excited to receive them! My class, along with one at a neighboring school, was fortunate enough to be chosen to pilot the Kindles as part of a grant that was written at our Central Office. I had made lots of great plans when preparing for them, but really couldn't anticipate just how much they'd change the landscape of learning in my classroom. (More about that in a future post). In the mean time, here are just a few things we've been doing since we got them:

• Taking AR tests ( I had to install flash and the dolphin browser using this tutorial for this to work). No more waiting for computers to test! Having the kindles in hand has really encouraged the kiddos to take those AR tests. 
• Playing spelling and vocabulary games on Spelling City.
• Researching things we're learning about in history. Yesterday the students researched the Bankhead Tunnel in Mobile, AL, and realized through their research that many of them had actually been through it! 
• Bookmarking favorite sites. My kiddos are now proficient at bookmarking their favorite sites, starting with KidBlog, Voki, PearsonSuccessnet, and more.

• Creating blog posts on KidBlog. (You can see our blog here). 
• Creating Vokis and Toondoos. 
• Using Evernote to create thank you notes (complete with pictures and audio files) and emailing them to Mr. Dixon, the person responsible for this great opportunity. 

I can't wait to learn more about them and use them even more in class. I'll be posting my ideas and the things I'm learning along the way, and I'd love to hear any suggestions from you veteran tablet users out there.