Guided Reading, Apps, and GHOs

Hello all!

THe days just seem to go by SO fast that I forget to update things on my lovely blog. My co-workers and I decided at the start of 4th quarter to NOT departmentalize [t just teach all subjects to our own kids "without switching"]. This has been surprisingly...AMAZING! It has opened up options with the iPads that I didn't even think about. We are able to incorporate and CREATE on the iPad for ALL subjects ALL the time. The days just FLY by, as I said above....it's just crazy...I feel like as soon as I get here in the morning I am in a dead sprint until 4pm when I look up and realize it's time to call it a day.

STICK AROUND-we have done a LOT of puzzles in Stick Around [I have dumped all of the puzzles I have created for Science, Grammar, Reading, SS, etc into the 6th grade BPS folder Brent made for us]. Last week, however, was our first FORMAL assignment of CREATING a puzzle. I had them do this for 9-7 which was finding a pattern and continuing it. It definitely challenged a lot of the kids...many asked "can we just do the worksheet?", which tells me the worksheets are not making them think as hard as we hope or NEED them to. I told them no...this was their assignment and that they could do it-it would just take some patience and knowledge. The kids did a great job for the most part-we will need to talk in the future about CHALLENGING ourselves and others by creating puzzles that are 6th grade appropriate. Some kids, for example, did problems like 0, 5, 10, 15, __, ___, ____. A little easy, but at least they were creating and exploring this amazing app.

Ask3-via Twitter I read that they are going to discontinue/get rid of this app. Does anyone know why? Did anyone else hear or read this? My kids LOVE LOVE LOVE this app for math....we use it several times a week as one of our "choice activities" for Math. If they are discontinuing it, is there another app out there like it? I know Explain Everything...but I love that in Ask3 all the students in the class can view each others' videos, post comments/videos of their own within a classmate's video....WITHOUT uploading it to YouTube. Comments? Advice?

Guided Reading-we have taken off with our "menu of options" [see a previous post for pic]. The kids have enjoyed the variation of activities. We have asked students to put 1-2 pieces into their Google Drive "Guided Reading" folder they created and shared with us. This allows us to see the games they have played via screenshot or uploaded their videos on Chatterpix and Sock Puppets and Tellagamis. If you do a Chatterpix....these do NOT directly upload into Google Drive. Once students create a fluency practice in Chatterpix, we have to plop it into Explain Everything....save the project....and then upload VIDEO file via GOOGLE DRIVE and export it to their guided reading folder. Here, we [Sarah Armstrong and I] can check our kids' folders on a weekly basis to make sure they have done at least ONE activity a week, and within 5 weeks, they will have done ONE from each of the daily 5 activities.

GHO-our recent GHO was with a school in Irvine, California. When I email the teacher about setting up a date and time, we decide if we want to do state ONLY or if we want to do city and state. [once someone gets our state, city is easy as very few cities in Nebraska have 50,000+ residents...which we tell them in our intro of the class/town]. It was very challenging for my students to guess their city as California of course has thousands and thousands of cities....many with a lot of people. After we guessed city and state, we did a short Q and A session. It was fun to see what the kids wanted to ask each other. See URL below for the student-created iMovie trailer and iMovie slideshow.....after every hangout we write about it on our kidblog.org/MissSaliesClass and include the link to one of the two media sources above. We also have connected with classrooms on the blog that we have had a GHO with! I recently re-emailed parents the link to our blog page so they know we WELCOME their comments ALWAYS!!! 

Upcoming: GHO with Tony Vincent and teachers at 3:20pm today, iPad Academy tomorrow....

New apps: Math splat, Everyday Mathematics Equivalent Fractions [thanks Chelsea Hoglund], Thinglink, Athens City Walk [great for Ancient Greece]

iMovie SLIDESHOW for GHO w Cali

iMovie TRAILER GHO w Cali