20 Questions Live!

Over the last two weeks my kinders have been playing 20 questions with our twitter pals in Michigan.  I got this wonderful idea from an amazing kinder teacher, Matt B. Gomez.  Hop on over to his amazing blog for other incredible ideas.  Matt's Blog After reading his inspirational blog post and watching his video,  I decided to give it a try.  Both my class and our Michigan pals had an absolute blast.  I set up a simple google doc and shared it with the other teacher.  We agreed on a time and voila.... amazing, relevant learning with real world application.  My kids were completely engaged in the reading/decoding,  asking questions, answering questions, and learning digital citizenship!  We played one week with my class selecting a  Texas Longhorn as our "item" and our friends asked the questions and then the following week we played again with us asking the questions.  We had to guess a mitten.  This was so easy to set up and do that we are going to try some other versions.  Perhaps a game centered around math next time!  I have included the link to a video of my class answering questions the first time around.  Give it a try!  You can find someone in your building  or another school or if you have connections with other teachers in other states.  It is so fun & easy.

20 Questions video

Online reading homework! Help save a tree!

So, it is a beautiful Sunday afternoon and it is Earth day!  I just got done giggling at my students' weekly reading discussion question answers and I was thinking about ways to help the earth!   At our school, we are not allowed to send home leveled readers from our literacy library or our adoption.  This forces us to either print all of our homework books or send them digitally.  For a long time, I was printing the books but do to some budget restraints at my local campus this year,  I switched to a digital format.   I do this by assigning their reading books on www.edmodo.com .  Each week, I upload a pdf copy of their leveled reader and then I enter discussion questions into a short answer quiz.  They go on each night and read their book to someone and on Thursday, their parents help them read the discussion questions, type the responses, and submit the quiz.  I think this is a great way to get parents involved in discussing their child's reading rather than just listening to them read and signing off on it.  When I get the quiz,  I go in and look at each answer and it allows me to comment if I wish.  This is my favorite part.  I love to show them that I am giggling at their answer or to ask them follow up questions.  It also allows me to add the "grade" to my gradebook.  We don't keep numerical grades in kindergarten but it does help me see who is on track doing their homework.  If I don't want to assign discussion questions, I can upload a multiple choice quiz or some other printable like graphic organizer for them to fill out and return.  I also love that edmodo is available not only on a computer but also as an app for the iphone/ipad or android devices.  I have a few students who do not have a computer but their parents have an iphone or ipad...My answer to that..." No problem!  Have your child read their book to you from your phone!"  It allows me to create groups within my class and give only certain students certain assignments.  Perfect for differentiated reading and a way to go green!  Happy Earth day everyone!  

Sharing work with parents

I love this quick and easy way to share our work with parents.  The kids did a fabulous job learning how to create character maps in their journals!  I simply snapped pictures with my phone, uploaded them to www.animoto.com  and created a quick video. I then emailed the link to parents.   Since they do not take their journals home,  parents would normally miss out on this fabulous work.  Pretty painless... and the kids LOVED seeing their work in video.