Kindergarten2 students continued to practice mouse skills by reading an interactive story on abcya.com. Students clicked on the speaker icon on each page to listened to the story and read along, as best as they could, with the words being read highlighted on the screen. To proceed to the next page, students clicked on the relevant icon. Our focus this week was on clicking on objects on the screen. abcya.com has a few read along stories for students to read with parents at home.
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Worried about your toddler or young one around technology? Technology is moving into schools and sometimes people think we are doing away with books and writing. This is a big misconception. We blend our learning to include technology and traditional approaches. The idea is to use technology where necessary. Want to know how to approach technology use at home with your younger children? The Digital Back Pack for Toddlers is a very good resource from the Family Online Safety Institute. It provides tips for good digital parenting and gives ideas on when and how to use technology with children. You can subscribe to FOSI to receive regular updates on digital parenting and online safety. The Digital Back Pack was compiled by Denise Lisi DeRosa. I met Kindergarten1 students for the first time this year. I will be working with Kindergarten1 students with technology in their classrooms. Students have some experience with different kinds of technology ranging from tablet to desktop computers. We will be working on familiarising with both types of computers. Last week, students learned to take turns while sorting objects on the ipad.
We try to expose students to a variety of technology tool as much as possible, where we can. Students use Windows Dektop computers in the computer lab and iPads in their classrooms. Kindergarten students learned to use the mouse to click and drag. For some students, this year is their first time to use a computer mouse. Students read an interactive story Lilly the Wild Cat on abcya.com to practise their mouse skills. While practising, students handled headphones and learned to put them back on the table and leave their computer space tidy after class. Kindergarten2 students learned about directions in the classroom and later used the educreations iPad app to show directions on a simple map. We used a picture as a background and the students drew the directions using the different colors based on the teacher's prompts. Educreations recorded the teacher's prompts and captured the students' annotations. The activity also involved, on another page, students finding specific buildings on the map based on their street numbers. This was an opportunity to assess students' knowledge of numbers. Students watched each other's recordings on the projector's screen to do peer assessment as a whole class. This was a good way to capture student learning and be able to share it with parents via a link or their classroom blog. The students also enjoyed to peer assessment on the big screen. Kindergarten 2 students have been using Teach Your Monster To Read, a free game that teachers children to practise first stages of reading. This game allowed us to personalise/differentiate student learning where they all progressed at their own pace. Each student, working at their individual computer, created a monster and took it on and adventure while learning the first steps to read phonetically. Kindergarten 2 played the first game 'First Steps' and explored Letters and Sounds. Since the game is personalised, students were required to sign in with their own name and password. This gave them an opportunity to practise typing in their name on the computer and introduced an element of Digital Citizenship - remembering a username and a password. Typically, students play the second game 'Fun with Words' in Year 1 but since the game allowed us to differentiate instruction, students who completed the game were automatically taken to the second game giving them exposure to their first words. Kindergarten students explored Kids Doodle Coloring Book HD - Kids Games for the iPad. They drew a picture of themselves and added some stickers to decorate their drawing. We shall be using Kids Doodle Coloring Book to trace and practice writing our names.
Kids Doodle Coloring Book HD - Kids Games is a free iPad app that children can use at home to draw something and then explain it or in the classroom for a variety of activities. Kindergarten students used iPads for the first time in their classroom today. Though some students have used tablets at home, this was the first time for some students. We discussed the different kinds of computers we have used and have seen others use at home and at school. It was interesting to find out that the iPad is another kind of a computer. We then talked about how we would keep our iPads safe, handle them and ask for help when we needed it. The students came up with brilliant answers like, washing our hands before we use the iPads so that we would't make them dirty, raising up our hands when we need help and not walking over the iPads. Students quickly washed their hands and began to use the iPads. We explored Preschool Learning Fun; sorting, shapes, numbers, differences and other games. We also explored Kids Doodle Coloring Book just to get acquainted with the iPads.
We read the Friendly Shapes iPad story developed by Tab Table Ltd. This was a good revision tool for shapes and colors. We also had an opportunity to help a student who was absent when students learned about shapes identify the different shapes. Students particularly liked the activity at the end of the story practicing their dragging skills as they had to fit all shapes in their correct places. We then had lots of fun solving tangrams to build a truck tractor and a rocket among other things. We used the Toy Tangrams iPad app developed by Tab Table Ltd. We definitely flexed our problem solving skills. I would definitely recommend these two apps for Kindergartners to practice telling their shapes. |
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April 2016
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