Showing posts with label HOTS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label HOTS. Show all posts
Talking Tom
For the last couple of weeks my sixth graders have been learning to persuade an audience. A favorite topic for all of them in the past has been the environment. Using that idea and a comment one student made about the James Cameron's dive last March. So, off we went for two weeks of reading about deep sea diving, ship wrecks, and seeing it was good or bad. The problem--how to get them to present the work without taking TONS of time. (Which I don't have in interventions.) One student in the group noticed that I had put Talking Tom on the iPads and became asking and asking and asking if they could do something with it.
Talking Tom and his Friends (which are free) are easy to use and allow them to create and apply the knowledge that they got from reading. If you area not familiar with all the silly things that Tom can do, make sure you plan extra time for students to just play before getting down to work.
Before getting out the iPads students had to create their script and make sure they had meet all the requirements on the rubric. Then I get to read through it and make sure its short and sweet. Talking Tom only gives you 30 seconds to record.
I have another group that used Talking Tom to write a script that had to contain as many VCE words as they could get in and have it make sense. This was not as challenging for them as I thought it would be for them. But we had great fun. They turned out great with more to come. Enjoy!!
I have another group that used Talking Tom to write a script that had to contain as many VCE words as they could get in and have it make sense. This was not as challenging for them as I thought it would be for them. But we had great fun. They turned out great with more to come. Enjoy!!
Apps We Love
Its been five months since I first laid my hands on an iPad. It has been a challenge (but fun) to find ways to bring them into small group interventions without them becoming a gaming station. My students love when I say, "We're going try this and hope for the best." They just grin from ear to ear and go along for the ride. I would say that my best lessons have happened after playing and after those days of "let's try this."
My plan for the coming months is to move groups to paperless. I think I've worked out the kinks and the students are done whining about having to move between apps and the web. I'm going to start with math because its a great way to create an electric journal--showing off their work.
The apps that I have chosen depend on what I what students to do with them. The way I went about it is by Bloom's Taxonomy. I'm cheap. I have a rule: If an app doesn't have four plus stars and I have to pay for it-I don't buy it. I keep looking. My students have three favorite that were paid for--Explain Everything and MathBoard are on all the iPads, and iMovie (which is only on mine). I also stumbled across a site that has many, many fabulous ideas on how to use free apps in a classroom. The Appy Hour Radio Show can be download from iTunes but having blog posts are very useful. This link will take you to beginning of the show.
These are my students favorite apps. I've broken them out. This is not everything my students have but these are the ones we use on a daily basis. One big problem, I had to work through was how students were going to share their work with me it we went paperless. I decided that we could use Evernote. We have a class account for Evernote for students to upload assignments to.
I'm looking forward to getting back and moving towards a stronger integration using our iPads. Has anyone used Edmodo? Did you like it? Hate it? Have a wonderful start to your school year!!
Subscribe to:
Posts
(Atom)
I contribute to:
