Flipgrid and Kindness

Wow! It has been a VERY long time since I've been here! I've been a bit busy!!
Today I want to share a fun Flipgrid activity I made for my students. Kindness needs to be shared, and often, right?! Well, this Flipgrid activity will get them excited to show many people in your building how they can be kind!
First, I will read, Try a Little Kindness, by Henry Cole. Any book about kindness would be awesome, but I really like this one!
 
After the story, my students will get this Flipgrid BINGO game board! Each space has a picture of a person or place in our school building! My students can scan the form at the top, and either show something they've made for someone to show kindness, or tell something they've done to show kindness to someone or in that area of the building when they go to our topic grid, Kindness. I will put this Google doc in our Google classroom, so they can also click the links in each box, which will also take them directly to our Flipgrid. We have 5 Chromebooks and 8 iPads, so my 23 students can take turns with this activity when they are done with other assignments. 

I hope this inspires you to try something kind with your students using Flipgrid!

Wipeboards

Wipeboards are on my mind today!
But first... When I logged in to write this today, I have to say, I know it's been a long time since I blogged, but WOW! Way too much time has gone by! All I can say is, it's been a really long, trying year! I'm sorry I haven't been a very faithful ambassador for several great organizations, and I've been trying some fantastic products, too! I have some wonderful firsties this year, but they are making me earn. my. keep! 😅 As we say in Minnesota, "Ooftah!"
Today I want to tell you about a great classroom lifesaver I've been using for large groups, which can also be moved to my small group instruction. It is call the Wipebook Flip Chart. It is awesome! The charts come with 10 sheets! One side has 1" grids (PERFECT for people like me who write uphill all the time) and the back side is blank. Think about the possibilities for graphing in math, and drawing shapes with symmetry using the grids! YES! The blank side is great for my students to have for writing words during Daily Five, when they do not have to worry about lines.
Each page has holes for hanging, which the rings go through on my stand. They are very durable with the cardboard encasement. Here are a few pictures to see how I use it in my room:

 

You can see that I have my new Wipeboard Flip Chart hanging on my old whiteboard stand (never mind the mess underneath-oh, my goodness!). A few summers ago the custodians tried to clean several of our stands with heavy duty cleaner, and it scratched the finish off, leaving us without a whiteboard to use! Major BUMMER! So when the great guys at Wipebook asked if I would be interested in trying out one of their new Flip Charts, I jumped at the chance!

Here's some more details - I shared five of them (I wanted to keep several just in case they didn't clean as well as Frank Bouchard @Wipebook said they would clean. Wow! First of all, use Expo markers - that is the recommendation of Wipebook, and I did not stray from that. However, when Frank told me black worked best, so I just HAD to try red. I know how it goes when a guest teacher comes into the classroom. They grab the first  marker handy and start writing. I wanted to know if other colors were going to be a problem. Do we really have to always have to use black? I didn't know if I could endorse a product if black was the only color I could use. I do teach first grade, after all, lol!
 Since we were working on a long-term weather unit and going to be researching, I needed to leave choices up for a period of time. The words were on the Wipeboard for over 2 weeks. This is where even more of their awesomeness comes in!


 If you have something you want left up for longer, after about 7-10 days, the marker dries and becomes more permanent, but can be wiped away EASILY with Expo White Board Care. Here's an example:The first video was taken without using any Expo cleaner.  The marker had been on the Wipeboard for at least two weeks. The second video was taken seconds later, using the Expo cleaner. I just sprayed it onto the paper towel, because I didn't want to erase all of the weather words - we still needed them.  

Ugh! Scratch the videos! I Can't get them to upload! I've tried 3 different platforms. Sorry! Please trust me from this photo, when I say it was truly just a simple wipe across the chart with the expo cleaner - no back and forth!

I want to also show you how you can move it around the room! The back is pretty sweet. It is made of cardboard, but folds out on the sides and bottom for added support when you want to move it to the floor or a table for small group instruction.

The tabs that hold them on the chart are easy to release without any tools.  You can clip them up anywhere in the room, or leave them on the cardboard stand.

Another cool feature of Wipebook is their app. Within the app, you can take a picture of your wipeboard, and choose where to have the image sent. You can have it sent to Dropbox, Evernote, Box, Google Drive, or Microsoft One Drive. The people at Wipeboard also make Wipebooks - that's how they got started. Here's a like to their home page Wipebook. I chose to just try out the Wipeboard, since my whiteboard is such a disaster.
I stated earlier that I shared Wipeboard Flip Chart pages with my colleagues. I don't have pictures from their classrooms, but they are using theirs in similar ways. Some use magnets to hold theirs on their scratched whiteboard stands, others have magnets holding theirs to their chalkboard. The feedback from my peers was the same as mine - two thumbs up! We love Wipeboard Flip Charts!!!
Give Wipeboards or Wipebooks a try!

Genius Hour Update!

Oh, my! I've been absent!! Here's the story... I had rotator cuff surgery in early March.  Ugh.  I NEVER imagined how awful it would be! My doctor said I'd miss two weeks of work.  Ha!  Six weeks later, I tried a valiant effort of full time return.  That lasted a few days.  So I finished the school year with mostly half days.  I've been so blessed to have such wonderful substitutes who truly understand not only my students, but also my my insane schedule and use of technology in my room.  To top it off, the wifi decided to wander away from my room for nearly six weeks, during the time I was gone!! So even though I'd coached my students well on how to help each other with all of the apps, there's only so much you can do without wifi! 😥

I had promised my students we'd work on Genius Hour (G.H.) projects during the spring.  That became increasingly impossible after the first week I was home for two reasons - 1. The school year would end on May 16th for us this year, due to a building project within the district (our high school is being redone!!!); and 2. I just could not push all of this onto a substitute.  It is exhausting and overwhelming to do Genius Hour.  I absolutely love it and it is TOTALLY worth it, but I go home each day during their choice project time and have my family pull me out of my car and drag me up to my bed (That's when I am HEALTHY!). If you're thinking, "I don't think I'll do G.H. now",  DON'T THINK THAT!!

Here's why I love Genius Hour so much:
1. Students work so hard for projects they believe in.
2. I use Flipgrid to have my students "Pitch" their ideas for their projects.  This is great, because they have to think about what they want to do, do some research to make sure it's viable, write a little script from which to practice, then record their pitch on Flipgrid.  Students who don't otherwise have a voice, DO! Flipgrid is awesome, and with G.H., those quiet, shy students have a chance to voice their opinions in a more private way - I.heart.flipgrid!!
3. Students who may not write for other assignments are writing pages for you - without your reminders and prompts.
4. The level of engagement is FANTASTIC!  The level of energy in my classroom during G.H. is electric! I can't even begin to think of the best way to explain it, but I've never seen students - ALL students light up with excitement as much!
5. Students shine when they get to present their projects.  I use an iPad on a stand to record the students, then load their video into Seesaw to share with families, and even post on our Seesaw blog.  At times, I'll even do a live Tweet.  In the past, I've used Periscope directly to share happenings in my classroom - now it's even easier with it being embedded within Twitter! Gotta love simplified living!!

So this spring...Here's what I ended up doing....

I read the book, What Do You Do With a Problem,

and explained to the kiddos that I had a problem. I was going to be letting them down, I apologized to them and asked for forgiveness, but explained that with having my arm in a sling, being so exhausted, and not enough days left, they weren't going to be able to do the projects they'd pitched.  MAJOR SAD FACES! Most of them got over it quickly, but a couple took a few days to come to terms with it.  I respect that. We'd talked it up so much!
I wanted to replace the project with something fun, and would be something we could do over the course of several weeks.  I had already planned the idea of making things out of cardboard boxes and had collected boxes, but had not settled on the actual project until we read the book together.



Here's the book we read: What to Do With a Box  While we read it, the wheels started turning, and one of my students suggested he might make a car.  To piggy-back, I suggested a "what-if" - what if we all make some type of car and have a drive-in movie theater in our room and watch a movie during the last week of school?  That was it! It was decided and we were all hooked!  Paper plates and fasteners were purchased for wheels and steering wheels.  Personalized license plates were crafted - one was, "The Best" (pronounced The Beast 😉). Oh, the fun we had!!!! Here are some pictures in stages!









We had a real assembly line going with the boxes!  I was able to purchase 21 boxes from a local business, Drop and Go so all of my students had the same sizes to start with, and the boxes were blank on the outside.















We got water bottle donated from Tri-County Water in Hutchinson.  The water was so refreshing!














We watched the movie, Sing!  The cars were rockin' with a few of the tunes! 😉

So that's what how the end of the year ended for us with Genius Hour.  I'm sorry this post was so late!

I've been busy prepping for the NCTE WLU conference later this week in Tucson, AZ!! My friend, Cassie Froemming and I are presenting at one of the symposium sessions! I'll throw a post up about that later! I'm so excited to have a chance to share all of the great things I've been doing with my students in first grade!! Whoot-Whoot!!

Participate

Have you found Participate.com yet? I happened across them a little over a year ago, and so glad I did! This site has revolutionized my teaching for a several reasons:
  1. I.heart their tweet deck!! They have SOOOO many chat groups (over 500!!!) already to go on a calendar! If you don't already see yours, you can add it! Chatting through Participate is so easy.  Once, I had trouble getting online with them - I thought I was going to quit Twitter chats if it was going to be that hard without Participate. Seriously.
2. When you're done chatting, everything you've talked about and all resources collected through the chat can be curated in your account at Participate! FOR. REAL!!  AND....you don't have to type your #hashtagchat each time you want to post something!  Have I sold you yet?!
3. You can create collections of your own, or find items within Participate to add to your collections.  For example, my school uses Literacy by Design for language arts.  I add to it by curating videos to help teach themes.  Instead of trying to remember where I saved my videos on my computer, I simply save them within Participate, in a collection I created for Literacy by Design.  I have other collections for math, sea turtles, Black History Month, etc.
     I have to confess that I accidentally deleted my Literacy by Design collection a while ago, so I recently recreated it. Oopsies. Luckily I knew what I had in there! It does happen, and it was my fault!
4. You can also collaborate with other Participate users! There are chat windows you can open and have dialog with other users.  For example, I may want advice from someone on what else to add to my Black History collection.  I can invite other users, then ask them what I'd like to know. They reply back on their own time, similar to Twitter Direct Message, Facebook Messenger and emails.
5. Customer Service is fantastic!  If you have a problem or an idea to improve their service, please feel free to share it with them! The staff at Participate are THE BEST!
6. It's a free site, yes, but that doesn't even factor in for me.

So....have I convinced you to give them a try yet?  Here's my advice:
Start with an account.  You can create an account with email, Google+ or Twitter.
Join your favorite Twitter chat group for a few weeks and you'll be hooked!  You'll have Participate.com bookmarked on your computer toolbar, or always open, like me. 😊

But please don't stop there!  After you've gotten comfortable in chats, start a collection or two, and invite others to join Participate, too! Participate is a place for many to do just that - Participate! It is a verb - a vibrant, active place for teachers to come together to collaborate and work together, creating wonderful materials and resources for students worldwide!
I will blog more about their awesome Professional Development courses and badges soon, but I have run out of time for today.  My family duties call...aka laundry is stacking up, dishes, vacuuming, etc.

                       

Conference Symposium Application Overwhelmed!

Wow!  I have never applied to be a presenter at a major conference before.  I bow down to all of you who do this on a regular basis!!  My friend, Cassie and I are hoping to present at the NCTE summer global literacy conference in Tucson, AZ in July.  I just hit the submit button for us!
Poor Cassie has had the most Miserable cold EVER! Between meeting in person, Facebook messenger and Google Docs, we hammered out all the details.
I know the next one will be easier, but symposium writing...lesson plans for an awesome group of 1st graders...hmmm... 😊
I'm sorry it's been too long since my last post! Boo!!! Coming soon, I promise!! I've got great things to blog about!!! Here are a couple of sneak peeks at two of them:
Participate
Flipgrid
If you don't have accounts with either of them, head there now!  I'll be blogging about these great sites and the awesome potentials for you and your planning/students!

Blogging in My Classroom with Seesaw

After reading AJ Juliana's article about taking risks, http://ajjuliani.com/risks/,I felt it was time I shared this site with my class. I also felt as though I'd been blogging with my students all along.  I started combing through last year's Seesaw archive for a particular student's video posts, as I thought he'd been modeling blogging all along. Sure enough, Matson was blogging and didn't know it - the problem was, neither did I! A great opportunity slipped through my fingers!
                                      Click here to see Matson's Game

It was an awesome way to share his learning, in a personal way, and he felt very empowered! This was "HIS" site! He must have posted 6-8 videos ending with, "Thanks for watching."

Now, after reading the article on taking risks, I told my students I want them all to use their Seesaw account as their personal blog.  We will still only post their best work, but what a great conferencing opportunity this creates for myself and my students! We can view their work together and decide if it should go "live" into their account.  Sometimes I happen to see them recording live, so I can approve the work without having to view it a second time, but we usually do, as a lesson in editing (you never know what the sound quality is like, for example).
We are first graders.  Our videos are far from perfect.  Sometimes saying goodbye at the end of videos gets silly.  Cameras zoom in and out, faces get really close to the cameras, voices change during the last 10 seconds of recording.  It's all a part of creative expression and style - and learning what your audience wants (or what your teacher will tolerate, lol). Time to talk about building digital footprints!
By the way, I will blog about the video you watched - the math lesson I did with my students  - later.  It was FANTASTIC!!! :)
Happy Blogging!!!

Lessons Learned in Genius Hour Studies

Hello! Well, I was super excited to have Genius Hour with my students this last Friday.  I had loaded a video for each of them into their Seesaw account.  Yes, it was a bit time consuming, but SO worth it! I found the videos on YouTube, copied and pasted the link into SafeshareTv, and then into each student's Seesaw Genius Hour folder.  I love SafeshareTV, because that's all the kids can see - what I put there.  No links, no side bar graphics, etc. This is what my students saw when they logged in:

Some of the animals my students were researching were more difficult to find videos than others.  But that was the least of my problems :)

I did not think I would have WiFi issues.  We were the only class in first grade, and very likely the only ones using WiFi in our building (10 classes of 1st grade and 9 classes of kindergarten).  The time of day we do Genius Hour is between 2:00-3:00 on Fridays.  The high school and the middle school are done at 2:20.  The bandwidth should have been pretty open.  BUT.... only about 1/2 of my kids could get their videos to load.  I did eventually get everyone able to view his or her video, but it took until 3:05 - time to pack up to go home - before we got everyone done! INSERT SAD FACE HERE!!
Lessons learned - always lessons learned!
1. Plan on having around half of the students go online at a time.  The other half of the students can be researching with books, looking for pictures to add to their work, drawing features, or working on another project.
2. Pre-teach a few students how to help problem-solve basic problems which may come up.  For example, how to access the file (some forget how to find their video, and end up watching someone else's video).  This will save you lots of time, and help your students feel empowered!!
3. Teach two students a new technology tool, and have them teach two students, and so on... Again, empower, empower, empower!  You do not have 21 brains, 21 mouths and 42 hands to help them all in the time frame they want.  I've been there! This technique will limit the number of questions you will get tenfold!  This last Friday, I used this technique to teach my students how to take screenshots, and how to upload the photo to Seesaw.  It took me 3 minutes to teach two students.  Like wild fire, they taught the class and told others to teach someone else after they'd practiced it.  Will they have it perfect? Not everyone.  Will they remember it the next time they need it? Most will, but I will have to remind a few.
I will make a book of experts for each of the apps.  The kids can see who the "Go To" kids are for each app.  Eventually, we will be able to offer our expertise as  "Kid Tech Team" for our building, helping other classrooms when needed and asked.
4. Here are some examples of the QR code helpers I use, the guides my students use (if they want)for animal research, and some "live" Genius Hour projects in progress.  We will work 1 more time researching before we put our research into a presentation, using Shadow Puppet Edu.  You'll notice in my students' journals that they've cited (or it was on a previous page I didn't photograph) the book they used for their research.  I've made it very clear, even at the first grade level, the importance of citing work.  It may not be APA format, however, lol!

These are the supplies we use for our animal research Genius Hour projects, in addition to library books and iPads.  We will also use Chromebooks to research, with the same websites bookmarked on the toolbar.''

  

All of my students listed the facts they knew about their animal first, before they picked a book from the library.   This student listed all he knew about cardinals first on the paper, then as he learned NEW facts, he added them onto post-it notes.  I modeled this procedure for them using bats as an animal to research.  I wrapped up the research phase last week, and will model how to make a presentation in Shadow Puppet next week.
Shadow Puppet is not the only way my students can present their learning, but for their first project, I want all of my students to learn one complete process the same.  After this Genius Hour project is complete and everyone has shared his or her project with the class, I will model different ways to share projects - I'll save that for a different blog post! :)

Other examples of my students' projects.
This is my go to for great animal researching!  I have the students bend the paper back, so only 1 QR code shows at once.  You just need to have a QR reader loaded on your device.  I have QRJump on the iPads.  There is a Chromebook extension for a QR code reader if you use Chromebooks, and QR readers are available on android platforms as well.

The next pages are from a great friend and master teacher, Sabrina Peterson.  She shared them with us when she worked in our school a couple of years ago.  I miss her so much!!

I've used these pages with my first graders for 3 years, but usually in May.  It's a bit hard for many of them to read all of it this time of year though.  I made it optional, and not too many used it.

Reflection is always important for teachers to do. After each lesson I do this - with the students and again after they are gone.  I asked them about the problems we had, and if there were any things we learned from our frustrations.  One of my kiddos said, "It's ok, Mrs. Heikes.  Sometimes it's like our Smart Board.  It's an ornery board.  So we just had ornery iPads today."  Patience is a virtue!  Bless his heart!! We learn from each other every single day!