Write About provides many images with writing prompts to get students started with their creative writing. Students can write their response and do an audio recording of it. Teachers can create virtual classrooms and provide individual written feedback to student writing. Student creations can be shared publicly or just with their classmates. Teachers can change prompts or upload their own photos. Prompts are divided into various categories for easy searching.
Google Classroom is one of the applications that TDSB schools can use.
To set up your classroom, follow these steps:
1) Go to AW school site (use Chrome browser)
2) Click on Google tab bar (top right)
3) Click on Google Classroom
4) Log-in with regular TDSB email/password
5) Click on + (top right) to create a class
6) Click on Students
7) Click on Invite
8) Use search tool, type in students' names and check off box and click Invite Students
For students to access Google Classroom:
-Follow steps 1-3 from above
-Students emails are firstname.lastname@student.tdsb.on.ca
-Passwords are the same as their regular ones
-After signing in, they get a prompt asking them to join the classroom
Buzzmath is a great 1-to-1 middle school math tutoring program that provides rich activities, instructional support and data management to track students' progress. It was designed by a company from Montreal, so the units are aligned with Canadian Math standards. There are on-demand examples and solutions for every practice activity. There is also a built-in calculator for students to use. https://www.buzzmath.com/
The students in my class have really enjoyed Buzzmath. The site uses a star & medal reward system that motivates them to build up their points and excel to the next level. It is a very engaging program that is easy-to-use and fun. It is a great way to assess their understanding. In our class, students spend about 3 periods per week working through the different units to reinforce the concepts they are learning. Many of the students have been using it at home as well.
Foldify is an app that lets students create customized shapes to meet a huge variety of educational goals. Students can create 3D objects (from nets) that further understanding or demonstrate mastery with applications like these:
- identify/combine geometric shapes
- advance spatial recognition
- comprehend, calculate surface area and volume
- build number sense
- explore probability
Choose a template and customize it with multiple creative tools; you can even import your own photos to be printed on the foldables. Blank templates provide nets that form triangular pyramids, cubes, rectangular and hexagonal prisms, and spherical shapes, along with houses, vehicles, creatures and humanoids, hearts, milk cartons, and more. Your creators can see what their nets will look like as realized 3D shapes in real-time within a side panel on the screen.
Educreations is an app that turns the iPad into a recordable, interactive whiteboard for creating Khan’s Academy-style tutorials, lessons, or stories. It’s both a teaching and learning tool, allowing users to create lessons and browse what others have created. It’s very simple to use and intuitive, requiring very little time to learn, and created videos can be used by anyone via iPad or computer. Educreations can be used either as a pedagogical tool in flipped or distance-learning classrooms or as a platform for student exhibition, allowing students to demonstrate learning, craft presentations, and teach each other.
This activity emphasizes the skill and art of planning by using Educreations to put students in the role of teachers. After researching a topic of interest, each student will devise an engaging method for sharing his or her knowledge with the class in a video medium, breaking down the steps to understanding a concept in an easy-to-follow format. This can also be used as a form of summative assessment because students must be masters of the material to effectively communicate the content and answer any questions posed by the teacher and fellow classmates. By sharing and storing these video lessons, students will feel a sense of ownership and accomplishment. Additionally, they will learn from their peers' expertise by participating in each others' lessons.
Step 1: Students sign up in pairs for a chapter or topic of interest.
Step 2: Students conduct research on their topics.
Step 3: Students draft lesson plans, learning objectives, and overarching structures of their lessons.
Step 4: Students write, narrate, and create the video footage for their Educreations video lessons.
Step 5: Students can share and present their video lessons, then archive them for future classes.
The Arrival - Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
In LEAP/ELL class, we have been reading "The Arrival" by Shaun Tan. Students are working on a photography project in which they choose 9 meaningful images from their lives that represent things they associate with their home country. They are also learning how to respond to texts. We have been looking at the strategies of making connections and visualizing. Using Haiku Deck, students wrote their 1st reading response and designed the slides to match with their responses.
The 8 questions /prompts they had to respond to were:
1)What does this book remind you of?
2)Choose one image from the story that you loved.
3)What are 2 questions you have for the author?
4)What did you like about the story?
5)What did you not like about the story?
6)What would you change in the story?
7)How would you change the ending?
8)What were your 3 favourite things in the story?
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