Our 2nd Graders have been studying 2 dimensional shapes. Second grade teacher, Mrs. Quaal, asked for my help to create an activity that would allow students to take a photo of shapes in their classroom, draw the shape on top of the image, and record themselves identifying each shape and its defining elements. Essentially they created a series of screencasts, one for each shape. We used one of Seesaw's newer features, Add Page in order to create this series.
To accomplish it, students followed the steps from an activity that I created so we could easily remember each step.
Though it was helpful to see the documentation from the steps, we streamlined it on Mrs. Quaal's whiteboard to help students remember where they were in the steps.
Because Mrs. Quaal's students were accustom to using Seesaw, they managed this multistep activity quite well.
Check out this example of a single screencast from a series that the student created.
I learned a great deal from this lesson. I loved watching how engaged and independent the students were in demonstrating their learning. I also realized a few minutes into the lesson that I needed to be clearer about how students should delete an image so they wouldn't delete all of the pages of their project. Once I realized that this was an issue, I quickly circled back around and added this step for students:
Caution - If you don't like your image, do no click the trash can in the upper left or it will delete all pages of your project! Use the attached to the image to delete the image with the trash can.
Now that we have worked out the kinks, this activity is a great template for students to screencast their future learning with Seesaw.
It's November! Already two and a half months of the year have flown by us! At OHE, we have many new initiatives that our teachers are trying to wrap around and embed into their classrooms. As the school's Digital Learning Specialist, my main task is to support those new initiatives for teachers and students.
Given the sheer expanse of the overall objectives of digital learning in today's classrooms, I would never say that any one app should become the single focus for educators. After all, any app is only as good as its use with our students, and variety is the spice of life! However, our experiences with Seesaw this year has proven it to be very close to perfection as we continue to push toward the larger aims of digital learning. It has been fun watching our OHE teachers embed this tool with ease into their classrooms!
This year, Lakeville Area Schools adopted Seesaw as our LMS for K-4. We moved from the free version to the paid version, so now it is supported by our district's student information system. I have been so impressed with how many of our teachers embraced Seesaw right from the start. This is a tribute to the user friendly interface from Seesaw, and our fabulous teachers! Greatest of all, Seesaw supports student voice, choice, collaboration, communication and creativity. Love it!
I began the year with a two hour staff inservice. For those of you who know how an elementary school year startup feels, you know that teachers hit overload in the first hour or two of back to school meetings. So much info! With this in mind, I tried to make it as simple and easy for them as possible. I was lucky to have a Seesaw webinar arranged by our district's Digital Coordinator, Brianna Buck, and a customizable Google slide presentation that she had curated/edited from Seesaw. I was grateful for this jump start. It made the early days of Seesaw go much more smoothly.
Once the year started, I began to make the rounds to teachers, checking in, co-teaching Seesaw lessons with them and answering their questions. Then at the beginning of November, I was given another opportunity to inservice staff. By then, our teachers had begun using Seesaw and were more comfortable with the app's ins and outs. During this inservice, we were able to begin fine tuning how we used Seesaw. Below is a Smore newsletter I used for this inservice.
Most recently, I began sending our staff a Smore email each week with some of the OHE highlights. This has proven to be very popular. I believe our teachers find inspiration and encouragement from seeing what others in our school are trying!
Our fall Scholastic Book Fair & Grand Event had a fabulous selection of books this year, and our grandparent event saw our largest attendance yet! The Grand Event was held before school starts with a very early start time, but our dedicated grandparents seemed unphased! I am so grateful for all of our parent volunteers, and specifically our co chairs, Jeannie Storlie and Katie Blanchett. They spent many hours before and after the fair making sure everything went smoothly!
I created a book preview video for our OHE morning announcements during the fair.
I also created a celebration video for our Grand Event!
Finally, I shared A Big Book Fair Thank You with our OHE community to express my gratitude for the new books we purchased for our Oak Hills Library! All in all it was a huge success!
Somehow along the way, I became our school's photographer and videographer. In truth, it is an unofficial title I have given myself, but it does feel like I am the keeper of our precious OHE memories. I evolved into this role, but when I think back, it definitely grew in 2017 when I became responsible for our OHE daily announcement video that students record using a green screen and the Touchcast app. (To read more about our Touchcast announcements, check out my blog post Daily Announcements At OHE - Figuring It Out!)
Then and now, each time we have an OHE event, I create a celebration video to embed in the announcements. Even though it wasn't my original intent, these videos have become a video timeline for OHE. I am happy to create these for our school as they share a few of the things that makes our school so special. Here are a few from September and October.
The month of May has been CRAZY busy with digital projects at Oak Hills Elementary! This isn't a new phenomenon for us. During May, classrooms finish with their state MCA testing, and teachers begin to turn to the much anticipated (and dreaded by some) research projects. Some form of research is part of the ELA standards at all grade levels. In April, I sent a flurry of emails to our teachers giving them suggestions for sources for their student research. I wanted to help guide them to find sources (digital and book sources) that would support their curricular goals and provide options for differentiation for the wide ability of readers in their classrooms. Next, I set about trying to convince each grade level to choose a digital option for a final demonstration of knowledge. Several had always done their project with paper and pencil, so I was happy when they all jumped on board! (2nd grade was done with their community jobs/careers research, so we did a creative writing lesson! ) Now the problem was how to navigate getting enough devices to the right grade levels and being available to help with the teaching. With a great deal of effort, scheduling and borrowing we all pulled together to figure it out.
At the beginning of research, I also took the opportunity to discuss digital safety and citizenship with our students. By embedding this information into introduction lessons when student are actually about to practice these skills, I believe it adds relevance for them.
5th Grade
Our 5th graders used iPads and iMovie to create a final project about an American hero of their choosing. This "tried and true" digital tool was the best option for a longer video. Following their research, students created their iMovie by adding images, text, music, and voice recordings about their famous person. They learned about pacing, how to rearrange images and match their voice recordings to the images by editing the length of each image. They learned how to edit the display of each image using the "Ken Burns Effect". They personalized their iMovies with interesting facts that would keep their audience interested! Their final movies were uploaded to Google Drive, shared with their teacher and viewed by the entire class.
4th Grade
Our 4th graders used Apple Clips to demonstrate what they learned about a state of their choosing. 4th grade teachers asked students to find 10 facts about their chosen state that they found interesting. They didn't restrict them to the state flag or tree, though some students wanted to include those facts. They wanted their students to find the facts that they found most interesting about their state.
After students found their facts, they used their iPads to locate images that would match their facts. With that done, students created their clips. They added a poster introduction, images with live titles and a few stickers for fun. Before students recorded their voices, I walked them through the best way to edit the text if the "voice to text" was incorrect. Finally, they airdropped their final projects to their teacher's laptop and watched them as a class. This lesson was so engaging that students and teachers loved the final results.
3rd Grade
Our 3rd grade teachers gave students more structure for their research as this was the first time these students would be doing individual research. To help scaffold students the teacher chose the same topic for students - loons. Also, the teachers pre-selected the websites that students could use before the project began. Student took notes about loons using their digital sources. They were encouraged to write fact without writing it word for word, in sentence fragments. This would help them avoid plagiarizing. (...a topic we covered before they started) Though this lesson wasn't individualized, it did give students an opportunity to learn how to research so that when they are released to choose their own topic, they will be ready. Once their research was done, student created Google Slideshows complete with titles, bullet points and images.
2nd Grade
Our 2nd grade teachers had already completed their research on community jobs/careers, so we worked together on a creative writing activity. Teachers read their classes the book Scranimals by Jack Prelutsky about animals and plants with mixed up parts.
Students used the website Switchzoo to create their own unique mixed-up animal. Once they had created their animal, I taught students how to take a screenshot of their animal as the website didn't have an easy way to download the image of their newly created animal. Students uploaded their screenshot animal image to Google Drawing. They then wrote about their animal using a text box inside Google Drawing. Students seemed totally engaged in this project and were proud of their final project!
At the beginning of May, our 5th grade teachers asked if I would be willing to help them teach a math standard around creating a spreadsheet. They wanted me to focus on teaching students how to create and use a spreadsheet to find averages: mode, median and mean. I jumped at the chance! I am a bit of a nerd when it comes to spreadsheets, and I knew that our 5th grade teachers would also find this information helpful.
We began by gathering simple data points from our students - their favorite ice cream flavors! What could possibly be more important. We covered the most basic concepts of spreadsheet cells and cell addresses. Students began by entering their data points, highlighting the data, and creating and editing graphs from this data. It also created an opportunity for us to discuss graph styles (circle, bar, line graphs) that best match the data.
We then moved to the average temperature for Lakeville, MN. With the data points entered, students highlighted their data and used the formulas for mode, median and mean (average). First we inserted the formulas using the available pull down menus in Google Sheets. Once we tried that, I taught students how to type in the formulas directly into the cell/formula bar and highlight the data. We practice changing the temperatures and watching how it affected the averages. Voila! Students thought it was cool that the spreadsheet would do their math functions for them!
attached to the image to delete the image with the trash can.
