QR Codes in the Classroom and My First Freebie!

Happy Sunday to all of you!  :-)

I'm back with another post showing how I integrate technology into our second grade curriculum.  Today, I want to share a few things I know about QR codes.  I'm sure it is old news to many of you, but I'd rather be redundant than leave somebody without helpful information.

Last spring, as I was planning a research activity my grade level team had put in the plans, I came up with a way to do it with the set of 10 iPads my campus has at our disposal.  I looked online for websites that had information about the United States flag that were near a second grade reading level.

As I found each website, I entered the link into a QR code generator.  I used www.qrstuff.com/.  You can download, print or e-mail the code that is generated for each website.  Once I had my QR codes, my prep work was done.

Once in the iPad lounge we have on campus, I helped my students locate the i-nigma app and went over how to scan QR codes.  They surprised me by taking to this technology skill even more easily than I thought they would.  (We use lots of technology in our classroom, so my students are pretty tech-savvy.)

The i-nigma app is free from the app store.

My students and I had a great time with this activity, and I'm excited to incorporate more QR codes into my class this school year.  (For those of you that are interested, my students recorded their research for this assignment that I have discussed today on a circle map, coming up with at least 10 facts about the American flag.  Unfortunately, since it's summer, I don't have pictures or student work samples to share.)

Now for the freebie.  Please note, that this is the first thing I have ever created in PowerPoint for my classroom.  I hope everyone will be kind.  :-)  I know it's not perfect or fancy, but I'm looking forward to developing my skills and learning more about creating products for my classroom.

Click here to download this freebie.  It includes QR codes for 10 websites with kid-friendly information about the U.S. Flag.    

This sample page shows that I have included both the QR code and the website link for your convenience.  

  My next project that I'm working on is a problem-solving set.  My district really focuses on what they call Intentional Problem Solving, where we have students solve a math word problem daily.  While I created these and printed them out daily for the students to glue into math journals last year, I'm hoping to get 180 of them typed up in a file that I can just project on the SMART Board for my students this year.  My plan is to just have students record their equation, show their work, and circle their answer in their journals daily.

Anyway, thanks for reading.  I'll be back next weekend ready to share another way that I use technology in my classroom.  Have a great week!     

   

Economics and PicCollage

Hey everyone!

I'm back, and I am trying to use summer to get ahead on blogging and planning for the next school year.  I'm "binge-writing" a few blog posts and scheduling them to go live throughout the month of July.  Hopefully that will help me to stay on top of this blog a bit better.

I'm going to go ahead and continue with my theme of integrating technology into content area instruction.  I'm doing this for my campus also, so it's making blogging a bit easier as it becomes just a matter of a little bit of editing of one post to serve two purposes.  Along with a few other teachers, I'm a campus technology leader which basically means that I model using technology tools in the classroom for my colleagues.

Today, I'm sharing how I used PicCollage to assess my students' understanding of economics vocabulary.

PicCollage is an app for iPad/iPhone.  You can create a profile on their website, which will show your collages, but you cannot create a collage on the site (To follow PicCollage on Twitter click here. :-) ).  Creating collages is done in the app.  Once you open the app, you choose a background and layout.  Then you simply tap anywhere to add your first picture.  The picture can come from your iPad/iPhone camera or from the web (we used Google Images in class).  You can also add stickers, text, and you can even add video now (this feature was unavailable earlier in the year when I used the app with my students).    

I had my students use PicCollage and the Google Images search to find a picture to represent each of the following economics terms that we had discussed: good, service, need, want, producer, and consumer.  After they found and labeled each picture example and completed their collage, we inserted a picture of their collage into a Google Docs word document.  Under their pictures, they typed 1-2 sentences for each vocabulary word explaining why their picture was a good example of the vocabulary word.  (Note: I had the students do their explanations in Google Docs because my school has embraced student digital portfolios, and I wanted the students to have this assignment as one of their artifacts.)

Check out what two of my students created below (students worked with a partner for the collage portion of the assignment, but each was responsible for writing his or her own explanation of how the pictures represented the vocabulary words):

Guided Reading and What's Been Going on in My Classroom Lately?

Happy Sunday night to you!  I hope you all have enjoyed your weekends.

I'm going to start off with a few notes about Guided Reading chapters 3 and 4 (So far, while I assumed this was the "bible" of guided reading, I don't know that I'm getting too much out of this self-imposed professional development book study.  Can you recommend a better book about guided reading for me?).  

Chapter 3: 

• This chapter was about the components of a balanced literacy program.  As a teacher with background in teaching ELLs, I appreciated their emphasis on oral language as the undercurrent of a balanced literacy program.  (Components include interactive read aloud, shared reading, guided reading, and independent reading as well as shared writing, interactive writing, writing workshop/guided writing, and independent writing.  
• A gradual release of responsibility is evident across the 4 types of reading and writing.
• Guided reading should involve flexible, rather than fixed groups.
• Guided reading changes purposes across grade levels, but may include character development, story structure, comparing themes of different texts, exposure to different genres, and obtaining information from texts, among other purposes (p. 30).  
• Reading workshop (p. 32).  After reading The Book Whisperer, I know that this is what I want for my classroom.  
• Writer's workshop includes a mini-lesson (3 types: procedural, strategy/skill, and craft), writing time, and sharing time.  
• I LOVE the end remarks at the conclusion of this chapter!!!  On page 42, Fountas and Pinnell state that "The quality and effectiveness of the interactions between teacher and children (and between children) within the framework are most important.  It is not the elements themselves but the teaching decisions within them that lead to new learning. 

Chapter 4: 

• This chapter was all about the classroom environment needed to support a balanced literacy program and the "underlying theory" (p. 43-44).  
• The importance of the classroom library was supported by the two authors.  
• "Oral language supports literacy in a fundamental way" (p. 50).  Yet again, the importance/role of oral language is affirmed, as it was in Chapter 3.  

In the upcoming chapters, it appears that the authors will get into the specific components of guided reading.  I'm looking forward to these chapters, and I'm hopeful that they will be readily and specifically applicable to my classroom.  

Tomorrow, my school will be honoring the local veterans with an assembly and a choir performance.  Following that, my assistant principal will be visiting my class to watch my students present their products that show their learning about U.S. celebrations.  She observed them researching the celebrations for my evaluation.  I'm so proud of my students, and I'm so excited that they are learning research skills at the young stage of second grade.  I will share more about this learning experience after my students present their work tomorrow.  I hope to also actually post my contribution to My Truth Monday in a timely fashion (after my track record with this linky over the past few weeks though, if I post it by Wednesday, it will be marked down as a success in my book.  :-) ).  

Other things going on this week include Picture Book Month (throughout November, even though I just found out about it this weekend), and National Young Readers Week.  As part of the latter, my class will be reading the free daily online stories available here each day.  Here are the stories that will be featured each day this week (I know my students will be particularly thrilled that there is an AR test on the last 3 books.):

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Have a great day at school tomorrow, everyone!