I'm Back Again

It has been way too long since my last blog post. No excuses... I just haven't taken the time to write about what we have been doing in class with our iPads. So now I'll try to catch up and show some of our accomplishments this year.

I was very excited to start the year with iPads this year in August. Last year, I got them in January and only had 1/2 a school year to use them with my students. Now that it is February, I have been using iPads in my classroom for a year. Wow! I have made so many changes to my teaching, instruction and assignments! Changes usually are not too easy for teachers but I have truly enjoyed the changes iPads have brought to my classroom.

So... what are some of the changes I have made in my classroom? The most noticeable change has been being almost completely paperless! ALMOST...  I have made many of my students' assignments into PDFs and then I use iTunesU and Google Classroom for student workflow. My students also use Google Drive for sharing and storing their work. I am amazed how easily my students have picked up on using these Apps and features on their iPad and they are only 7 and 8 year olds!

Now you might ask... what kind of assignments do my students do on their iPads? One of the latest assignments we completed went along with our geometry unit in math. We did some App smashing and made a movie explaining geometric concepts.  We used Explain Everything, Google Images, Geoboard and PicCollage to complete this project. Students explained 3-D shapes,  a line of symmetry, congruent shapes, translation, reflection and rotation.  Here are a couple of student examples:

Geometry Movie by Erik

Geometry Movie by Mia