November 6, 2016

Last week was the first week that I had Classroom Suite up and running smoothly!

What worked- E.A. can now independently help with set up and trouble shooting

For our version of daily 5 I rotate 6 to 5 students on computers for wordwork, have 5 students in my group for focus writing or reading and then have 5 students working independently on writing or reading. Our goal is 20 mins of uninterrupted work to help build stamina. We graph our time at the end and discuss our stamina.

For Math we have a similar setup with 5-6 students working on their individualized Math programs on the computer, while I work with a smaller group. This has been working out really well for differentiated learning as i have a K/1/2 split.

All the hiccups along the way were totally worth it!I am excited to see their learning progress! If only I could figure out how to get to the green screen with all the stars that shows all their completed units….Right now I ask them to let me know when the green star screen comes up so I can see how they are doing…If anyone knows how to get to this screen please let me know!!!that’s all for now!

Edublog Set Bc October 27, 2016

Exploring Classroom Suite

For the past 2 weeks my students have been exploring classroom suite and have been assigned folders for reading and math, which is a bit of a pain staking process for setup. Some updates to improve this process would greatly improve the user friendliness of this program!  The biggest challenge so far is figuring how to integrate it into our daily routine, as there are often hiccups along the way and students need support while learning these programs. Right now I am currently experimenting with 5 on for word work while the rest do read to someone or read to self and also 5 on during SSD (social skills development AKA centers). My kindergartens love getting their stars and I can hear them exclaiming “Yes!” every time they complete a level. I have also noticed many of my students saying the words outlaid and sounding out the words, which is great! I look forward to monitoring their progress and seeing how much they grow as young readers. My next step is to integrate into our Math program.

I recently asked my grade 2 students to investigate Make a Book and they loved it! Pretty soon everyone wanted to try it! I can see this being a great tool for creative writing! However, I find that the technology for this program is very dated and it would be much better if there were picture icons for all the options in the  Make a Book program, as the writing is very small at the bottom where they pick the pictures to go with their story.  The kindergarten some of the grade 1 students cannot read the options at all. That being said the students are quite tech savvy and seem to find their way around this program quickly!  Our next exploration will be with the Multimedia Presentations, so they can experiment with  intellicritters!

Until next time!

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