Showing posts with label Summer Learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Summer Learning. Show all posts

Monday, June 12, 2017

Learning with Legos



Many of the teachers I serve at Concrete Primary and Powdersville Elementary have started to use Legos for learning in the classroom. For the 2017-18 school year, each of our district K3-1st grade teachers will receive a Duplo StoryTales Kit from Lego Education, and our 2nd-5th grade teachers will receive the LearnToLearn Core Set for the classroom. In order to help our teachers get started, our team planned for hands-on professional development during our annual summer in-service last week.

Primary Lego StoryTales Session

For our early kinders, we had a couple of hours with teachers and assistants, so we planned eight stations with two fun "brain breaks." To allow for teachers to share their creations with one another and participate in a true student experience, we created a Seesaw classroom which was also shared among teachers in our other primary sessions throughout the day. Click HERE to view our Seesaw Blog full of teacher creations!


Our session with first grade was only one hour, so we reduced the number of tasks and changed the content to be more aligned with first grade standards. Though the time was shortened, teachers were still provided with plenty of time to play, create, and post to our Seesaw classroom.



Teachers were very excited to have a chance to play with the kits they'll be receiving in August, and feedback from the session was great. To capture teacher feedback, we created the Padlet Wall below!

Made with Padlet

Elementary Lego LearnToLearn Session

Our district Reading Coaches facilitated some cooperative planning sessions for teachers in grades 3-5, and it was exciting to be able to provide them with a one hour "play break." During these sessions, we provided each teacher with a small bag of Legos and sample tasks for each content area from the Lego Education curriculum. Then, the teachers were given time to collaborate and create using the Legos and Seesaw. Click HERE to see the Elementary Lego Seesaw Blog for teacher creations!


Tweets from the Session










Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Get a Jump on Technology

Powdersville teachers are excited to use Google Classroom with their students next year, and the summer is an excellent time to give it a test run!

As a way to support teachers over the summer, our A1 Instructional Tech Team put together four tasks to help teachers "Get a Jump on Technology" before August arrives, and we are using Google Classroom as a platform for the course. This is a great way to experience Google Classroom from the student perspective before diving in with students in the Fall. The tasks listed below are designed to give teachers an opportunity to create things that will be useful in the year ahead.

Task #1 Make Google Forms Work for You
Teachers are asked to create a useful Google Form for next school year, (i.e. a student introduction form, reading interest survey, parent night survey). Then, create a QR code that links to the form and turn in the QR Code image. (Thanks to Alice Keeler for sharing her Quick Start Guide!)

Task #2 The 4Cs: Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking
For this task, we asked teachers to watch a Common Sense Media video on the 4C's and use a Google Docs template to transform a particular unit of study to include the 4Cs and technology tools. I have enjoyed getting to see the exciting things that teachers are planning and adding comments to the doc. Adding comments to a Google Doc is simple and effective!

Task #3 Creating Task Cards to Spruce Up Your Centers
This task has been my favorite! We asked teachers to watch a video from Learning in Hand, view some sample task cards, and create their own station/center task cards in Google Slides. Instead of turning in the presentation as an assignment, I asked my teachers to post the link as a comment and mark the assignment as done. This is a great way to have students share work for the entire class to view! I created a Padlet Wall to share their work here.



Task #4 End of Summer Presentation
For the final assignment, teachers are to create a multimedia presentation to document their summer using one of the following apps: Adobe Voice, Adobe Clip, Adobe Slate, Book Creator, Haiku Deck, Flipagram, or PicPlayPost. Again, I asked teachers to post a link in the assignment comments for all to view their final product. I'm excited to see the fun things Powdersville teachers create!

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)