Technology Tuesday: Seesaw

I am so glad that our whole school is using Seesaw this year as a portfolio for student work as a communication tool for parents.  And selfishly, I am loving it for the library.  At the beginning of the year, I asked our Instructional Technology Specialist, to add me as a teacher in all the classes.  I was then able to add a library folder in every class where students can put any work that we do in the library.  While I thought this would be the only benefit, that I would be able to keep a "portfolio" of their library work, I am finding many more benefits as the year goes on.  

1.  Parents can see what we are doing in the library!  When students are putting the work in the library folder, parents see that the library is a place where learning is happening.  Of course these are things I normally would have sent home on paper, but who knows if they actually made it home or not. 

2.  I can explain what we are doing in the library and show how it relates to what the students are doing in the classroom.  

3.  I can send my newsletter and other notes directly to parents.  Although it takes me about 10 minutes to post in all the classes, at least I am sure the parents have a better chance of seeing it than if I sent a paper copy home.  

4.  I can see what classes are doing in other subjects- because I am nosy that way LOL.  It does mean that I get notifications on every class though.  

Elephant and Piggie Speech Bubbles

At the beginning of year, I sat with our 1st grade teachers in a meeting with the reading specialist assigned to our campus as she talked with them about reading and writing.  One of the things she mentioned was noticing how authors used different things in their writing and then encouraging the students to try it in their own writing. I decided that I could do that in the library.  I read a few of Mo Willems Elephant and Piggie books to them and we talked about how he used speech bubbles to show what Gerald and Piggie were thinking and saying.  Then they went to a template I had uploaded in Seesaw for them. We looked at the pictures in the frames and talked about how the speech bubbles. 

Students then went to work adding in the dialog.  

Most of the students recreated the banana joke from the story We Are In A Book like this student did 

However, one clever little guy really understood the idea of a joke and came up with this (his teacher did help him with spelling).  The video is only 13 seconds long, he doesn't press stop though which is why it keeps recording.  Oops.



Don't you love that??