Back To School Apps!

As I'm preparing for another great school year, I have been organizing all my apps on my iPad. I now have them all in folders and it looks so neat and organized...I just hope I can find them all when I need them! A friend recently asked me what apps I use in my class that make my life easier in the classroom...this is what I came up with!

Grade It!

FREE

Grade It! makes it easy to calculate percentages for any assessment. Grade It! also allows teachers to email a copy of the assessment table. An Easy Grader is nice to have with you at all times!

 

Class Dojo

FREE

This app is GREAT!  I use this every day.  ClassDojo helps teachers improve behavior in their classrooms quickly and easily. It also captures and generates data on behavior that teachers can share with parents and administrators.

 

Stick Pick

$2.99

Allows you to pick a student at random just by giving your device a shake or tapping the screen. Stick Pick suggests question starters for learners at different Bloom's levels as well as ESL levels and also records how well students respond during classroom discussions.

 

 

As a reading teacher I use the following apps every day during guided reading.

 

 

 

Running Records Calculator

$3.99

This App combines all the standard running record calculator and stopwatch functions with the convenience of audio recording playback. (I have the lite version of this app which was free when I downloaded it.  The lite version doesn't let you record the audio.)

 

 

 

Record of Reading App

FREE

I just learned about this app this summer, and I am SO excited to use it this year!  It looks awesome!  Get it while it's FREE!!
 The Record of Reading app lets you use an electronic form for taking a running record. The app provides embedded formulas for the accuracy and self-correction rate (no need for a calculator!).  It also records the reader and embeds their audio into the running record for playback while looking at the running records.  The running record can be saved as a PDF and emailed.

 

 

 

 

Confer

$14.99

 

Yes, this app is expensive, but check out what it can do!

 

Confer is a note taking app that lets you record and keep track of the notes you take on your students; both individually and in small groups.

Whether you teach Reading and Writing Workshop or simply want to take notes on your students, Confer enables you to take notes quicker and it lets you sort, group, and view your students in ways you just can’t do with paper and pencil. Confer also lets you export and import your data via email, or upload it as a spreadsheet, so you can access your notes anytime, anywhere.

With Confer, you can:

- take notes on individuals and small groups
- view your students by the “tag,” "strength," "teaching point,” or “next step” in your note
- view your students by date, level, group, or flag
- search through student notes
- create flexible small groups
- upload your data to your gmail account as a spreadsheet
- export and import your data on any iOS device via email and Dropbox

 

 

 

If you don't want to spend money on downloading Confer, you can also try this app:

 

Teacher Notes

FREE

 

Teacher Notes functions as an easy way to file written notes, photos, movies or audio on multiple children, domains and content areas all at one time. Then when it is time to write reports cards or evaluations Teachers Notes has a quick way to sort notes by any combination of children, domain and content area. You can then e-mail your organized notes, or email just one note with its accompanied photo, movie or audio file. You’ll find that Teacher Notes functions much more rapidly than jotting down notes on a clipboard and you’ll be able to find your notes much faster than looking in a notebook.

Features
1. Have a different notebook for each class, each with its own kids, domains and content areas
2. Jot down notes, but also take pictures, movies and audio clips
3. Effortlessly file notes on multiple children, domains and content areas
4. Quickly find any note you have taken
5. Rapid sorting engine lets you order your notes the way you like
6. Email all your notes organized as you wish
7. Email single notes and access its photos, movies and audio from anywhere
8. Protect your information with a PIN code
9. Backup / sync notes to Dropbox so you can feel secure and always be up to date, no matter what device you're on
10. Edit notes that you've already filed

 

 

 

 

I hope you have a great start to your school year!

End Of The Year Ideas

I know some of you are already out of school...but I thought I would share a few things we have been working on during the last few days of our school year. Sorry this is so late... maybe you can save these ideas for next year!

A big hit in my classroom is the Mystery Person Report. I do this at the end of every school year. The kids love it.  I bring out some of the read aloud books I have shared throughout the year. We review some of the main characters in each of the books.  Then, they each choose a main character from one of the books.  They write clues about that main character on the mystery person report paper.  The answer is written under the smiley face. 

We later exchange papers with a partner and try to guess the character.  They love this so much that they have asked me to add it to our classroom blog so they can download it and do it with their family at home.

Mystery Person Report

 

Here's a finished example:

 

 

 

 

Yesterday, we made our monster bookmarks to use for summer reading.  They were a big hit!  I wrote a post about these in August.  You can view the post and get the directions HERE.

 

 

 

 

Today we are doing some fun word work.  They spent A LOT of time on this....it was totally silent in the classroom. They had to cut the letters and see how many words they could make with these letters.  We later counted how may words they came up with and compared them. 

 

Summer Fun Word Work

 

 

 

 

The last activity for the year that we are working on is a memory book. The memory book uses lunch bags. You just fold the lunch bags in half and staple. I thought it was a cute idea.  When you fold the bags it creates a little pocket for them to store things in.  I saw an idea similar to this on Pinterest, but I didn't see any downloads for the book, so I made my own pages and memory book example.

 

Here is my example of the memory book:

 

front

 

Inside pages

 

 

The pockets

 

Here are the pages I made for the memory book:

 

Memory Book

 

 

 

 

Enjoy your summer break!!

Writing Poetry

Now that we have published our All-About books, we are moving on to Poetry.  I love teaching this unit, and the kids love the freedom they have as they write poetry. 

I use the poetry lessons from Lucy Calkin's Units of Study.

I created a few things to use during this unit that would go with the units of study lessons...just to make my life a little easier.

We started off with just talking about topics for poems.  To make it easy, we looked around the classroom and used objects in the room that we see everyday.  Lucy has a GREAT lesson over this in the book! I have the students add things to their list and glue the list into the writer's notebook.

Poet's Eyes-Topic List

After some practice, I gave each student an object from the classroom  to observe.  They wrote their "scientist" notes about the object.  They later translated the "scientist's" notes into "poet's" notes.  I was amazed at how creative they were...and we were just getting started with  this unit!

Scientis't Notes/Poet's Notes

The page above had an example for them to look back at as they started their own notes.  Most of the student's found this page very helpful and wanted to use it to help them plan their future poems, so I made another page without the example so they could use that in their future poetry planning. 

Scientist's Notes/Poets Notes

As we move through the unit, I am creating an anchor chart to list what we do as poets.  I wanted them to have this to refer to as they write.  I made the anchor chart into a small notes page, which they added to their writer's notebooks.

Strategies Poets Use

During the unit, the kids will learn how to turn some of their story ideas into poems.  We will create an anchor with the steps and add the anchor chart notes to the writer's notebooks.

Story Poems

We practice the strategy using the page below.

Story Poems

I am  planning to have each student publish a poetry book, not just one poem.  They are VERY excited about this.  As they choose the poems they want to publish in their book, they will use this checklist.

Poetry Checklist

Published poems will be graded using the rubric below.

Poetry Rubric

My plan is to add their favorite poems to the Book Creator app to create our own class book of poems.  They are so excited about this!

 Book Creator

$4.99

Research Fun!

We do a small research activity every 9 weeks and this time I wanted to make it a little more fun. I incorporated two iPad apps that the students used to create a final project.  They had a great time and it was simple! I did a VERY quick tutorial of how to use the apps... and they were on their own. 

I split the class into small groups to research a president.  Each student in the group was responsible for using the internet or books to find an IMPORTANT fact about their president and paraphrase that information. (This is something that we have worked on before.) 

 

We used these websites:

 

The White House

 

Pebble Go

(you need a subscription to use this site)

 

Each group used this form to paraphrase their facts and sketch a picture to go with it.

 

Research Page

 

 

These are the apps we used to create our final project.

 

Type Drawing

 

$2.99

 

 

Fotobabble

 

Free!

 

To create the final project:

 

1. We inserted a picture of the assigned president into Type Drawing. (I added these pictures to the camera roll ahead of time.)

2. The students typed in their facts.

3. They changed font, color, size, etc.

4. They added their facts to the president picture.

 

THEN....

 

1. We inserted the final Type Drawing picture into the Fotobabble app.

2.  Students took turns narrating their presidential facts.

3.  We played the final projects in class.

4. We added the final projects to our classroom blog for parents to see!

 

 

Here are a few of the finished projects!

(click the president's name to listen to the fotobabble.)

 

Abraham Lincoln

 

Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

 

 

John F. Kennedy

 

 

I used this rubric to grade the group research projects:

 

Research Rubric

 

The class had a great time with this and I really enjoyed the final projects!

 

Literature Circles

I have a few of my reading groups that are really ready to be more independent.  Right now they are meeting with me and then meeting as a book club group, but I really want them to have a specific goal and activity they can do without a lot of direction from me.  I also wanted them to really get into the text and have some deep discussions. 

I have done a little research on literature circles, but I have changed some things to customize it so it will work better for my 2nd graders.  Here's what I came up with:

Literature Circle Jobs:

View the pages below to see what each job is responsible for and the pages they will complete and discuss during their group meeting.

Discussion Director:

 

Summarizer:

 

Connector:

Illustrator:

 

Word Detective:

 

 

Character Captain:

 

 

Thinking About My Thinking (Journal Page):

 

You can download all of these pages HERE.

 

 

As I was researching, I came across a great site by Laura Candler with a lot of information on literature circles. The site includes helpful videos and a few free dowloads.  My favorite downloads were the question starters for group discussion as well as the guidelines and rules for polite conversation. 

 

Click HERE to visit her site!

 

Here are a couple other sites with some free literature circle downloads:

 

charmed in the 3rd grade

 

mrs. cowan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Study #2

I just finished working on this author study for Patricia Polacco. It is very similar to the author study I did for Cynthia Rylant. At the end of this unit, I plan to compare the two authors.

 

Click below to download the lesson notes:

Patricia Polacco Author Study

 

 

I use the Patricia Polacco books shown below in the unit, but will have a basket full of her other titles for the students to explore during stations.

To keep track of all of our thoughts and new learning, we will create a foldable again.  The kids love it...and so do I!

 

Here is an example of mine:

 

 Front cover

 

Inside the left flap:

 

Inside the right flap:

 

The middle flap- inside:

 

Under the inside flap:

The back:

We add to our foldable or our journal daily during the unit.

 

In the unit, we read the story, The Keeping Quilt.  During this time, the students will create their own quilt square. Inside the quilt square they draw/write about something that is important to them. We will put the squares together to create a large class quilt. 

 

I plan to create a large quilt by using gallon size ziplock bags and taping them together with colored duct tape. The students can then slide their quilt square into the bag from the back.  Here's an example I found:

 

 

 

The unit download also includes the pages that go with the culminating acitivity.  The activities are the same as the Cynthia Rylant unit because I allow the class to choose which activity they want to complete.

 

Click below to download the pages that go with the unit.

 

Patricia Polacco Unit Pages

 

 

 

To end the unit, we will discuss how the Patricia Polacco stories are similar/different to the Cynthia Rylant stories and why. 

 

Here is a quiz for the end of the unit:

 

Patricia Polacco Quiz

 

I hope you find something useful here.  I would still like to create an author study unit for Eve Bunting as well (because I REALLY love her books too), but we'll see if I have time for that!