Mrs. Klipfel's Top Teaching Tips: October 2012

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Color and Light

The fifth graders in Mrs. Boucher's class have been very busy for the past week.

In science class they have been studying color and light. The "test" was to show what they know in an educreation presentation. It was very impressive.

The process began in the classroom with a written draft of the test. The students created an outline of their answers to help them organize their final work. We booked the library and the iPad cart and everyone was ready to take the "test".

The students were all focused and created wonderful and thoughtful presentations. When the students were done they then worked with a partner and practiced their presentation before the final recording. There was a lot of science vocabulary in the room that day.

*Tech Tip: The students took screen shots of each page as they finished them in case any of their programs suddenly closed. (And as it turned out this saved the day a few times because we could recreate our presentation.)

The next step will be to share their knowledge with other fifth graders.

MA framework that was addressed:Light Energy: Recognize that light travels in a straight line until it strikes an object or travels from one medium to another, and that light can be reflected, refracted , and absorbed.

Take a peek at the presentations at educreations and learn something new about color and light.

http://www.educreations.com/profile/2131141/

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift was live at Proctor School today!

Well really it was a live webcast from Scholastic in New York City. Proctor students were invited to the library this afternoon to watch the 30 minute webcast. Taylor talked about her love of reading and writing. She answered questions from her live audience as well as from classrooms around the globe. She inspired everyone to be a reader. The biggest hit was when Taylor sang one of her songs from her new CD, Red, for the students. Our audience was so excited! There was a lot of singing in our own library.

The students were told that the letters RED stand for Read Every Day.

Take a look at a tape of this live webcast.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

PicMonkey~ collages

Are you looking for a fun way to display your photos?

Pic Monkey is a great way to help organize and share your pictures.

http://www.picmonkey.com/

This is a free website that allows you to create a collage out of your photos. The process if very simple and you can save your collages and photos to your computer. There is no storage on line.

You upload the photos from your computer.
Choose the layout for your collage. The one I choose is Tile Border.
Then select your background color, spacing and corner rounding.
Save, share, or display.

A few of my favorite things.

You can also have some fun with the special effects.

Here are our Rainbow Teachers.

Happy Halloween!

Thursday, October 18, 2012

Photosynthesis

How do plants make food?

The third graders in Mrs. Corliss' class worked on educreation projects to share their knowledge of photosynthesis.
They began in class by drafting their title page with their name, title and date. The students did a rough sketch of their picture with labels. They also wrote a script for their recording. In the library, the students worked on the iPad and drew their flower with details.

Creating our pictures

Working with a partner the students rehearsed before they recorded.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Educreations

White Board Magic to Show What You Know.

What can I do with the Educreations iPad app?

Educreations is a recordable interactive whiteboard that captures your voice and handwriting to produce amazing video lessons that you can share online. Students and colleagues can replay your lessons in any web browser, or from within the app on their iPads.

Here is a tutorial created using educreations:

Click here for an introduction

Last week I worked with a group of sixth graders who had completed a science research project using text books from class and the library. They also used the iPad to research on line using links in the sixth grade portal. click here visit the sixth grade portal

Their work was extended by creating an educreations presentation to show what they had learned.

The group met to first plan what they wanted their final project to look like. This planning session is very important before the students use the record feature. We had already experimented with the tools in educreations and the students were then ready to produce.

The next time we met they created the pages that they wanted for their final project. A practice run without recording was next. Then they hit record and completed their project.

Click here to see the Fresh Water Presentation

To Show What We Know we invited two sixth grade classes to come to the library and view the presentation on the smartboard.

Very Impressive Work Sixth Grade!

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Spelling City for the Computer and iPad

Word Work made easy! I have used Spelling City for many years and the students love it. I often assigned this site as a homework option.

Take a look at Spelling City. http://www.spellingcity.com/

This is a free web based site that allows teachers, parents and students to input their own weekly lists. As a teacher you can load your weekly lists and they are saved for the students. There are ready made lists as well.

The link may be attached to your school web site to make it easier for students to find the site and log on. I often assigned this as an option for homework at least one night a week. I love the spelling pretest choice. (Parents do too!)

The program has many few activities as well as a premium membership. I have used the free version with great success.

Hang Mouse is a favorite game.

The site allows students to take a test, play a game, review vocabulary, and work on writing sentences.
Another feature are mini lesson videos located in the teaching resources section. During RTI students are able to work on individual skills that include a short video and a specific skill lesson.

Click here to watch the video on compound words. And then click on view a lesson.

The good news is that SpellingCity also has a free app for the iPad!
Be sure to check this site out.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Making Shaped Word Clouds-Tagxedo

I have found a new site that I am in love with. It is tagxedo. And yes it is FREE!
Click to go to this site.

http://www.tagxedo.com/app.html

This site helps create shaped clouds with words that you input.

Ready to Create?

1. Load the words. Add the same word more that once and that word will be larger in the final display. Use ~ to keep words together Minnie~Mouse

2. Choose your shape. You can even upload a shape of your own. I searched for an outline in images on the web. Saved it to my computer and then uploaded in tagxedo.

3. Many choices of colors are shown in themes.

4. Save, print, or share.

It really is that easy. And yes it is FREE!
Of course I had to make my Tagxedo in the shape of Minnie Mouse.

Ways to incorporate Tagxedo in class:

Portfolio/Report covers
Display words associated with a theme that the students are working on
Show character traits in reading
Practice spelling words
Mother's Day and Father's Day cards
Thank you notes

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