Reading Websites

This new school year will see a lot of adjustments, changes, and just THINGS added to our plate.  Especially with the addition of common core and the loss of Renaissance Place to our county (insert heavy sigh here), the burden will be felt now more than ever!  What can we do though?  Life goes on I suppose.
I for one will hate to see AR go more so than anything else.  Daily reading exposure, for its ability to promote  grade level vocabulary development, schema building, and just good old practice, will be a gap left from the AR loss.  We can use technology to close some of those gaps, particularly with reading.

Here are a few places to start:

Tween Tribune (tweentribune.com)- This is my favorite website!  It is a FREE service for teachers that publishes grade- level appropriate (k-4 or 5-6) , high interest, relevant news stories.  The non-fiction articles are short, but substantial and keep even me reading!  Four new articles are added every week and kids can browse through old stories as well.  If you sign-up as an educator, you can generate username and passwords for each student.  Kids don't have to login to view the articles, but they do in order to take a short quiz after reading each passage.  You will be able to view their quiz results (for each quiz taken).
We display an article whole class and use this as part of our Common Core writer's notebook.  This is also something they can do in the computer lab independently, as part of a center activity, or in small groups.

Storyline Online- Celebrities read popular picture books.  There are extension activities for each title that are great at incorporating Writer's Notebooks.

wegivebooks.org- A really wonderful non-profit organization that is dedicated to spreading the love of reading.  It publishes popular, quality ebooks that you can view online (for free :) with more added every month!

www.freereading.net- A good site to explore this summer, it has lots of lesson ideas, activities, and graphic organizers (plus free is good :)

You Tube or School Tube has a wealth of recorded picture books to offer.  Not to mention songs (LOTS of educational songs), it just requires a little digging.

Ebooks, displayed through the projector, provides 21st century skill practice in and of itself.

Audiobooks, combined with a Rockstar and an iPad, becomes an instant listening center.

While we are on the subject... now might be a good time to re-link our Google Docs that lists helpful learning apps.  While we have some downtime, you can take a look at the list again to see what might be helpful :)

Fluency practice (and apps that are useful for reading) within "center-ish" type rotations will be the discussion in future blogs so I won't get too much into that today.

BUT I will leave you with yet another reminder of how quickly our world is changing...

iPad Protection 101

Technology can be a wonderful tool to use in the classroom.  The problem often comes down to actually HAVING technology to use.  These devices aren't cheap and seem to be growing, changing, or upgrading constantly.  Fortunately for us at WJG however, we are off to a good start with at least a laptop, a projector, and an iPad in every classroom.  Not to mention access to a rotating set of 5 iPod Touches and a mobile laptop lab.  In the weeks to come, we'll focus on maximizing the technology we already have.  And like any good lesson, I will try to differentiate up for those that have more devices and down for those who may be uncomfortable :)
Today's blog though, is all about making sure the iPads/iPods we do have, remain OURS!

For the most part, my students are incredibly protective  of the iPads and iPods we have in our classroom.  Theft has been an issue a couple of times in the past for me, but never from my own kids.  Fortunately, we were able to recover the devices quickly and without much hassle or damage.  Each time I learned what NOT to do in order to better protect what we have.  Which brings me to our first topic for discussion: protection!  When you setup your iPads, hopefully you turned ON the Find My iPad feature.  If you're not sure, go to your iPad/iPod's Settings, then to iCloud and make sure the Find My iPad switch is turned to ON.  (I'll explain what you can do with this feature if your device is lost or stolen.)

The first time my iTouch was stolen, the child turned that locating feature off and we couldn't find it (yes, a kid was able to do this)!  So I learned, to protect against this, you have to put a passcode on your settings.  On your iPad/iTouch/iPhone, go to Settings, General, then tap the Restrictions button, and tap Enable Restrictions at the top.  (This puts a passcode on the settings of your iDevice only.  It is not a password you have to enter in order to get access to the home screen.)

It will prompt you to enter a passcode in (it should be something you won't forget, it's a hassle to reset if you do).

Next, under the Privacy section, tap on Location Services, and tap Don't Allow Changes.  This is important because this is what will lock the Find My iPad setting so nobody can turn it off.

Once turned ON, the Find My iPad feature is helpful because it uses GPS satellites and an internet connection to allow you to remotely access your device.  If you misplace your iPad (even if it's just "lost" in your own house like I constantly do), you can find it by using the Find My iPhone App on a different device (duh) or by going to www.icloud.com on a computer.  Once you enter in your Apple username and password, it will locate all of your devices that are online (i.e. connected to the internet and on).  You can make your lost device play a sound, passcode lock it so no one can use it, or if it's for sure stolen, erase it completely.  The sound it plays is a pretty loud one and can be heard from inside a backpack.  It will also pull up a map of the device's location (which is fairly accurate most of the time, but does say my iPad is in Ohio a lot too).

Our classroom door stays shut and locked when the students aren't in there (and my iPods and iPads are locked up at night), but both times an iTouch was stolen from us, it happened while we were all in the classroom!  I've learned to assign children to be in charge of each of our devices and we do frequent "iPad checks" to make sure they know where their device is at all times.  They also have rules about how to handle the iPads and an agreement they have to sign before they can use the devices, but that's a blog tale for a different day :)

Questions? Concerns? Thoughts?

Learning (and teaching) goes digital!

Times certainly are changing!  Gone are the days of Oregon Trail and overheads as the only means of technology integration in the classroom.  Teachers have to adapt, and yes even let go of, some of our outdated (but much loved) methods.  There are tons of quick and efficient ways to adapt technology into your classroom curriculum.  With something as basic as an iPad (or computer) and a projector, you too can be on your way to digital diversity!

The fact remains though, that technology for some is an essential tool that is used in every part of daily life.  For others, it is considered a vaguely irritating necessity that is tolerated at best.  No matter your comfort level however, it is undeniable that our world has gone digital.  Armed with iPads and an Elmo, we are grudgingly surviving in the trenches.  Ok so, maybe that's a bit strong, but there is a lot we can do with the technology we already have in our classroom.  ENTER our blog.  This summer we can share ideas and tips for 21st century "infusion" into our curriculum.  It may be a website, app, or activity, but hopefully you'll be able to find some useful information for next year.  At the very least, those that are "vaguely irritated" by all this computer stuff might get, dare I say, inspired?!

Thanks for joining us on our adventure!  And now, I leave you with some food for thought....