Technology Tuesday: Kinder Research

More thanks to our wonderful District Library Instructional Coordinator for helping us to take our research up a notch using the Guided Inquiry model.  Our kinder students researched jobs in the community and the tools people need to do their jobs.

This involved kinder coming four times for 45 minutes each time (and we still could have used more time).  We started off discussing what would happen if our school did not have a custodian.  You can read about that here.  Then the students went to tables where they sorted picture cards.  The cards had pictures of people and then tools that they might use in their jobs.

We had a good discussion about what tools people need to do their jobs well.  

In the 2nd lesson, the class was split into two groups.  One group stayed on the carpet with the teacher to look at books and the other groups went to the computers with me to read an ebook.  Then we switched. 

At the book station, I had books from these two series out on the floor.  

 Being the non-kinder teacher that I am, I was so thankful for the suggestion to give have index cards prepared with one green sticky and two yellow stickies. 

 As the students looked through the books, the put the green sticker on a page where they found the name of the job and the two yellow stickies when they found a tool the person used.

After they placed their stickies, they went and sat on a different part of the rug and the teacher paired them with another student to share what they found.  Most students had time to do 2 books.  

Meanwhile at the computer station, we navigated to four ebooks that our district owns.  These are called Community Helper Mysteries and give clues about the person all the way through the book and then reveal who it is at the end.  

After they listened to 2 books, they came to the table where they glued the cover of the books that they listened to and wrote the name of the person and a tool they used in their research journal (5 half sheets of manilla paper stapled together).

On the next visit, the used iPads to access PebbleGo and listen to one of the community helpers there. Again, in their journals, they wrote the name of the person and two tools they used.  

On the fourth and final visit, they used 30 hands to make a movie of one of the jobs and tools that they researched.  The librarians in our district had previously all found some pictures to put in a file that the students could access for this part.  The students saved the 3 pictures they needed to the ipads and then I walked them through adding the pictures to 30 Hands and how to record.  We modeled the video after the Community Helper Mystery Books.   The students saved their videos to the camera roll and then I loaded them in dropbox for the teachers to access back in the classroom.  

This was a great project for kinder however, as always I wish we had more time.  You'll notice on this video that we forgot to include the source slide.  We talked about citing our sources and how important it is to give credit for where we found our research, but when it came to crunch time we didn't make one to include.  We always seemed to be rushed trying to get 6 or 7 classes in four or five times during the two-week window that our district scope and sequence allows for research.  Wish it could be an ongoing skill through the whole year as interesting things come up instead of a two week chunk of time in their ELA block.  

Friday "Wrap" Up

This week was a little calmer without 3rd grade research days taking up my week.  I did get back to seeing my K-2 classes this week.

1st grade Bark George/ 30 hands sequencing lessons

Introduced 2nd grade Fairy Tale Battle

Met with a middle school librarian to plan a genre-fying PD

Helped student council with the New Year's Neon Dance

Went to dinner with Author/Illustrator duo Kate and Sarah Klise and networked with other librarians

Exercized 4 times!

And my Jamberry wrap of the week... Love Spell.  Perfect for Valentine's Day!

Technology Tuesday: 30 Hands

Have you heard of the 30 Hands App?

 I hadn't until last Monday at our Elementary Library meeting and boy have I been missing out.  It is an app similar to Educreations or ShowMe in the fact that you can upload pictures and then record. You can also write or add shapes to the pictures (haven't played with that very much).  But what I love about it is that each slide is its own recoding.  If you mess up, you don't have to start back at the beginning like some of the others.  That feature alone makes it a great tool for the younger kids but even better than that it is really easy to use.

Today, I used it with 1st graders for seqencing the story Bark George by Jules Feiffer

If you haven't read this book, you must!  It is a great story for sequencing, but is so silly. Kids of all ages love it (I sometimes even catch the teachers giggling).  Anyway, normally I have them sequence the story on paper, but after hearing about this app I knew I must try it.

I started off ahead of time by taking some pictures from the book with my iPad and then had to figure out how to get the pictures to all my student ipads.  I was going back and forth between Chirp and Dropbox and since I hadn't used Chirp before decided to go with Dropbox (probably a little more time consuming, but at least I knew what I was doing).  So I uploaded the pictures into Dropbox and then had to download them into the camera roll of the 11 ipads I was going to use.  (I decided to have the students work with partners)  I am sure there is an easier way to do this and would love to hear any suggestions in the comments below.  

Then when the class came in, I read them the story and we talked about the meaning of sequencing. They got their iPads and I walked them through getting the pictures into 30 Hands.  I made sure that the pictures were not in order on the camera roll so they were also out of order when dropped into 30 Hands.  

I showed them how to rearrange the pictures and record and then off they went...  They had to talk to their partner about the order of the pictures, move them and then record their retelling of the story.  

Here are 2 examples from our class today.  I love how one is short and to the point and the other is a little more wordy.  We have not spent much time recording in first grade, so there are some pauses, hesitations and talking between the partners, but over all I was pleased with all of the kids' work.  

Have you used 30 Hands before?  What apps do you like for retelling?