Get your students thinking with Into the Book!

Into the Book is a fabulous interactive reading comprehension website to teach reading strategies to students. Without exception, my students have found this site to be engaging and one that builds their confidence and success in understanding how to use reading strategies. Do they all become master readers? Not quite, but most students will start deliberately using at least two or three strategies in their reading and are quite proud of themselves that they can articulate why and how they are using it!

The strategies covered are; Using Prior Knowledge, Making Connections, Questioning, Visualizing, Inferring, Summarizing, Evaluating and Synthesizing.

Each strategy has an introductory overview that is read to the student, a short video of a teacher and students in a classroom discussing the strategy...and the best part, interactive activities that students can complete on their own to practice using the strategy. Students can save and print their work or email it to their teacher to print for them. Each activity asks students to use higher level thinking skills and to respond in different ways.

There is a not only a teaching guide for each activity, but a wealth of teaching resources for the strategies, including watching videos of other teachers teaching, a song, a list of read aloud books to support teaching the strategy, downloadable posters and lesson plans for other activities to do with your class.

When students go to Into the Book, they click on ‘Students’ to enter the student area. There they will be asked for their ‘Key’, which is their password. Initially, they simply enter their name in the ‘Get a Key’ box and Into the Book generates a password which will be their name with a series of numbers behind it. Once this is recorded, they will use this to enter the site, thereby saving all their work should they not complete an activity in a session.

You can skip the log in process, however, students’ work will not be saved. Teachers do not require a log in to enter the teacher area.

Each section of the interactive activities has an ‘Audio’ button, so low readers can have the information and text read to them. They can go back at any time  and revise their work, or simply start again.

I have used this site with grades two and three. I start with a read aloud from the recommended resources and discuss the strategy with my students. I then introduce the song and the poster, and we do another read aloud and work with the strategy together. Then we go to Into the Book. I have done this both as a whole class and as a centre during our Daily Five time. I have used most of the lesson plan resources and have found them engaging for students. The one drawback is that for some activities, students need to enter text on the site, and that can become an issue for low spellers. I always tell them that I am not marking spelling, but I need to know what they are saying, so to spell the word the way it sounds.

Throw Out Those Clickers and Use Plickers!

Are you tired of having to change the batteries in your clickers or having to fork out thousands of dollars for interactive response systems? Are you getting frustrated with hooking up cords to your computer or waiting for students to logon to a personal device for assessment?  Well, let Plickers help make your formative assessment in your classroom a breeze with absolutely no cost to you.

I have been using Plickers in my classroom for about a month now and the students get very excited about bringing out their Plicker cards and "showing what they know".  It is a fantastic way of gathering formative assessment to guide your teaching and student learning.  I encourage you to give Plickers a try.  You and your students will be glad you did!

What are Plickers? 

Plickers is an app that can be downloaded onto an Android or iOS device.  With only one device and some printed cards, teachers can quickly assess or poll their students by asking multiple choice or true/false questions.  The students hold up their cards a certain way (see below) to submit their answers while the teachers stands at the front and scans the class therefore receiving their responses.

Why use Plickers?

• easy to use and setup
• completely free (except for printing the cards)
• excellent formative assessment tool or for polling students
• students love it! (speaking from experience)
• inclusive for all - no personal or electronic devices needed for students (only one teacher device)
• no batteries to replace or expensive equipment to purchase

What do I need for Plickers? 

• 1 Electronic Wifi device with the Plickers app installed (Android or iOS)
• 1 Plicker card for each student in your class (Plicker Cards)
• 1 projecting device for questions (although you could have questions printed or written on the board)
• registration for a free account on Plickers.com

How do Plickers work?

1. Create a class on your Plickers account (each student you add gets a Plicker card assigned to them).
2. Create questions from the "Library" tab on your account and assign these questions to your class plan.  You can have multiple classes and the questions can be assigned to each class.
3. Print out student Plicker cards, cut them out, and hand to the assigned student.  Each card has a number which corresponds to the student that you added when creating a class.
4. Log into your computer and your device from the Plickers.com website.  Click on "Live Class" from your computer and choose the question you would like to ask from your device.
5. The question will be displayed from the projector and the students hold up their card a specific way to show their answer (more on that in the "How do students answer?" section)
6. The teacher then clicks on the "camera" image on their mobile device and then scans the classroom.  As the teacher scans the classroom, the camera recognizes the student's answers and records them.  The students will also see on the screen that their card has been scanned by having a check mark beside their name.
7. The teacher can then share the results on the screen with the students in the form of a bar graph.

The following quick video shows how the teacher collects responses. 

How do students use the paper clickers?

The Plicker cards are really simple and easy to use. You can download the Plicker cards here.  Take a look at the Plicker card below.

Tips for Plicker cards

• Plicker cards can be used for multiple classes.
• Print the clicker cards on card stock or glue them onto heavy cardboard.
• If you laminate the cards, use a matte film as it could be difficult for the mobile device to scan the card due to glare.
• Train your students to hold the cards straight up and down and not diagonal.  They should also be taught not to bend the cards or have their fingers in front of the image as the mobile device will not be able to read it.
• Paste the card on both sides so the student does not have to look at the front of the card.
• I put Velcro on the Plicker cards so the students can attach them to the front of their desk and easily find them when needed.
• Teach your students to ensure that nobody is blocking their card.

Here is what my classroom Plicker cards look like.

Printed on very heavy card stock

Attached with Velcro on front of desk

How do I create classes and add students?

Please watch the very short video tutorial I created showing how you can easily create classes and add students.

How do I add questions?

Below is a quick tutorial showing how to create questions and then assign them to a class or classes.

Give Plickers a try in your classroom and let us know how it went in the comment section below.

Virtual Lego??? Grade 1 Science-Building Things

Grade 1's love the Science unit, "Building Things". This year I tried Lego building with a twist of technology. Through google apps I found a Lego Builder app. It is a great app that allows students to use their imagination in a new way. My end goal was to have each child build a structure that had a purpose. I wanted it to be open ended to allow for students choice.

To begin I had to get the app on each of my students users. This was labour intensive for me and my EA because I did this in October when they were still learning the basics of logging on. In hind site I would have had older buddies in to help or requested a few parents to help with this  or possibly log on for them and add it for them ahead of time. You decide what works best for your school community. When they were finally on I told them to explore and try to figure out how to build. It is not easy if you have a high percentage of students without experience with basic computer skills. In my case I found that my students were not willing to take a risk and try so this first lesson did not go well.

Attempt two with the Lego Builder App,  I decided to start by doing a demo on the Smartboard.  I reviewed how to find the app on the Chromebook, then I modelled the basics of how to choose, place, turn the bricks. Off we went and this went significantly better. Everyone was able to build and some took risks this time and figured out how to change the colours of the bricks. I followed this lesson with four or five exploration/ practice times.

The next step was to have our grade 3 buddies join us for building a structure for the first time. The grade 3's had not used this app so it was a great opportunity for the grade 1's to teach the basic skills to older students and then the grade 3's helped them plan a structure that had a purpose. They built bridges, cars, houses, castles, boats and an ice rink. This time I had a few partners discover that they could turn their structure to see it from all angles.

Finally we were at the point where the grade 1's were going to build independently! I added a little more motivation by letting them know that I was not the only one who was going to see their work. We were going to make a YouTube movie showing their work and recording them describing their structure. Now we added the complication of needing to save their work so they could go back over a number of classes. This became a bit of a challenge. Students need to go to sign in to Publish your design. To do this students go to the top right of the Lego Builder App where it says sign in. They then have to enter their G-mail and password. They then click sign in with Google and are prompted to enter it all again. It is a bit tedious but most of my students were able to follow step by step and complete this independently. They then will need to hit save periodically as I found with all of the students working at the same time it would freeze and they would lose their work. They learned quickly to save every couple of minutes.

The products they built were creative and when making the movie we found a lot of them had created a story that went with their structure. To make the You Tube video I used the You Tube Capture App on my phone and recorded each child's segment. They had their structure on the Chrome book and then they manipulated to show what they made and what it's purpose was. Some described what it was and how they made it. Some told a story about what was happening. Some reflected on what they liked the most and what challenges they had while using the app. I then had Chrome books set up at the Celebration of Learning and parents watched the video of their child's work.

To improve this project for next year I would have limited the speaking time for each student as the final product had to split into two parts. I would have provided time for them to practice speaking to a partner about their structures so they had louder voices.

What I loved about making this movie as their presentation of their learning, is that students who would not have been able to reflect in a written form were provided success. All students were excited and engaged in trying their best. This open ended task resulted in some traditional looking structures and some very creative structures and this allowed for greater success.

I have shared a link to part 1 of Grade 1 Builds below.


http://youtu.be/9toWxbTx5LE

Butterflies - Excitement, Empathy and Drama

 Animal Life Cycles Grade 3 Science

As part of the Grade 3 science unit, Animal Life Cycles, students are to observe and describe the growth and development of at least one living animal, as the animal develops from early to more advanced stages.  This is the story of how one class used a forum to record observations and share experiences. 

Last spring my grade three students were very engaged in our butterfly project. 

There was drama, empathy and excitement as students shared their experiences and recorded the development of their butterfly larvae on our class forum.  

Each student received three Painted Lady Butterfly larvae and were required to journal their observations on a forum. Students recorded their observations, responded to each other and shared pictures as the larvae developed. 

Here are some of the excerpts from our butterfly forum on 123 LearnNet. You will get a sense of the connection and learning that happened.

This is Hawk's post telling about the day his butterflies emerged from the chrysalis.

Here is Eva's hopeful post:

And Hawk's encouragement:

In the end things took a surprise turn for Hawk. This was an email I received: 

"It was an emotional release of the flying beauties. 2 flew away into the blue while one only had moments of freedom before it was a blue jays lunch .So sad but that's a butterfly s life. We have enjoyed this experience so much that we plan on raising more butterfly s in the future. Thank you for this project." 

And Eva's butterfly did finally emerge and fly away.  However the thought of a hungry Blue Jay was not far from her mind. 

The following Google presentation shows the development of one student's butterfly larva through each stage to the day he released them.  Take note of the last two slides they are delightful!  

Butterfly Life Cycle - Google Presentation

This particular forum was on 'Moodle',  the LMS (Learning Management System)  we use to deliver online courses at our school.  

If I were to do this activity in a classroom setting, I might consider sending the larvae home with the students.  This would give them incentive to record and share their individual observations on a class blog or through a Google Presentation.