Do your students like to chatter?

Then you must introduce the free iPad App, ChatterPix for Kids!

This has always been one of my favorite Apps to use with students. The name of the App hints at it's purpose... allowing you to make a picture talk! The art of creation is very simple, yet students can express themselves and information in very creative and unique ways. For example, students could take a selfie of themselves at the beginning of the year and record their voice talking for up to 30 seconds to introduce themselves to the class. This App allows any image to talk. 

Here are some lesson ideas using ChatterPix:

• Have students share their opinion on a given topic with supporting evidence 
• Use a selfie to make themselves talk
• Use an image related to the topic 
• Have students use their selfie to share facts or things they learned about a given topic 
• Use a selfie to make themselves say the facts 
  
• Use an image of an important person or figure to share knowledge about them
• Use an image of artwork or animal and provide them a voice to talk 
• Use the camera to take pictures of shapes and share attributes about that shape
• Use the camera to take pictures of stuffed animals/characters from a book 

When looking at ChatterPix through these lenses the list of ideas start multiplying!! The possibilities are truly endless! What ideas are you thinking of now? 

What do you do for Wiggle Breaks?

Go NOODLE! 

It's normal, almost in any classroom to see that students need a chance to get up and move. Especially younger students, however this is just as important with older students. NO ONE likes to sit in one place for extended amounts of time. What are some things that you do in your classroom to help with this?? 

As a classroom teacher and now as Ed Tech Specialist, I highly recommend checking out Go Noodle! This website allows teachers to create a free account, create a class and select highly engaging videos that let your students get up and move. Each class has a champ character that helps motivate your students. After each video session, the site automatically tracks how long your students have been using Go Noodle. The progress bar tracks every 10 actives to help their champ grow. Once the progress bar is completed, students can select a new champ.

Go Noodle has tons of free videos. Our kinders LOVE Koo Koo Kanga Roo's videos, especially Pop See Ko! You can use the heart to mark your favorite videos and to easily find and select content to use with your students. Go Noodle also allows you to add your own videos from YouTube to your Go Noodle account.

If you haven't tried Go Noodle yet, I highly recommend you testing it out with your students! 

Getting Going With Kodable

Here's a little background: Last year, we jumped head first into using Kodable at SEVEN schools in TK and Kindergarten starting about halfway through the school year! Teachers created their classes, added students and loaded their class code onto their set of iPads. Many teachers depended on my support to make this happen! Most students were introduced to Kodable during centers, and we provided support during this time.

I've had the opportunity to work many of these same teachers again this year! It has been an exciting, rush of energy these first couple weeks of school! As with any classroom, but especially Kindergarten, the first few weeks are ALL ABOUT ROUTINES! Kinder students are learning how to learn at school, how to transition and listen to their teachers, and so much more. With routines and procedures coming together in many of my Kindergarten classrooms, teachers are starting to inquire about ways to introduce Kodable to their students.

What's the best way to introduce students to Kodable??

This is a great question that we are constantly looking to improve how we introduce and continue to reinforce coding with Kodable to our TK and Kinder students. Here is an outline of how our introduction lessons have evolved this year. If you have any suggestions or feedback, please reach out to me on Twitter or email. I'd love to know what you think!

First, we tend to start with a whole group lesson with the students sitting on the carpet. The students do not have any devices in front of them, this helps to have the students focus on the introduction instead of their iPad screens.


Students are informed that they will be learning a new, special language that computers know how to read it too! We connect this to what they are learning in school, their letters, sounds and high frequency words to know how to read English. Our computers don't know how to read English, they read their own special language called CODE. What is it called? "Code" we make sure all the students respond.

Next, we talk about how they have a brain, which helps them learn and think. Their brain makes them very smart. Do you think computers are smart? NO, they don't have the same type of brain we have. To help us learn how to code, or use the language computes can read, we are going to use a fun, App called Kodable. What's the app called? Kodable. Turn to your partner and share, what is the name of the App? We try to have the students focus on key words throughout this whole-group direct instruction chunk of the lesson.

To help us learn code, we will be coding our Fuzz Friend aliens through a maze. Now, do you think our aliens are very smart? NO, you are right! Our aliens are not very smart. They only know how to read these... (holding up paper arrows). Don't say it, think... what is the name of this shape? If you know the name of this shape, whisper it to your neighbor. Depending on the class, it's been very common in most of our title 1 sites, that only a handful of students know the name of the arrow. We spend a few minutes introducing the arrow as a shape. We point out that it is a rectangle with a triangle. The direction of the arrow can be rotated to have different meanings. When the arrow points up, which way would our Fuzz Friends move?

We have the students show the meaning of up on their fingers by pointing in that same direction. Next, we point out that if we were aliens we could go all the way up until we hit the ceiling. Can we go through the ceiling? NO! Would we want to tell them to keep going up? NO, that would be silly. Next, we turn the arrow so it's pointing down. This time we model moving all the way down to the ground and repeat the same procedures for left and right. To help students visualize and make a connection to the Fuzz Friends' movements in the game, we physically move side to side until we hit a wall in the classroom. This visual movement has really helped our students make the connection from the arrows and their meaning in Kodable.

Once we introduce the arrows, our next step is logging into Kodable and modeling the first 2 puzzles. In the second puzzle, we always model a mistake and how to debug our mistake.  Also, as the students point using their fingers (up, down, right and left) to show which arrow comes next, we will purposely point to the wrong arrow on the screen to make sure they are following along. Also, this helps to build a deeper understanding that the direction of the arrow matters. After completing the first two puzzles, we usually say, "Wow! Coding is a lot fun! Now I could continue this all day, but I'm thinking that you are ready to write your own codes!" This is where students are given the opportunity to practice this new skill on their own. Depending on the access to devices, students will log into Kodable and beginning coding either all together or during center rotations.

Other Helpful Hints

• When creating your class on kodable.com, create a class code that will be easy for YOU and your students to remember. With our TK and Kindergarten classes, we usually invest in the time to preload their class codes onto each device. We have found this easier for the students, that having then enter the code. The students only need to select their spaceship and find their name to begin coding.
• We use the playlists to stop students from starting new content. For example, we stop the students after the first two stages, right before the Bugs are introduced in the Sequence unit. We have our students who complete the first 10 puzzles quickly, go back and practice. When most the class has passed the first 10 puzzles, then we have another whole group lesson to introduce the students to Bugs and Debugging! Here's a link to my blog post on our Bugs! Lesson activity! 

Popcorn Letters were Popping!

A couple days ago, I had the opportunity to witness another fantastic letter activity during center time in a Kindergarten classroom. This teacher had prepared bags of "popcorn" filled with letters for her students. During the activity, students pulled out a popcorn letter, found the letter on their alphabet sheet and colored in the popcorn. The students were so excited to find "Letters" of popcorn! So much better than routine letter practice drills.

After viewing this activity, I turned to my good friend Google and Pinterest to search for this activity. Here is a link to Sommer's Lion Pride blog post where she shared her version of the activity for FREE!

iPad device management tip

Maybe it's just me, but I love to customize my devices!! Every time I get a new device, that's the first thing I always look to change, the default settings. Which, of course means changing my wallpaper.

On an iPad, you have two options to customize your wallpaper: the Lock Screen and the Home Screen. This feature can be utilized in the classroom for many different reasons and help teachers accomplish different goals. Depending on your technology setup in your classroom, your devices might be for each student or shared among students or teachers. Personalizing the wallpapers can help to easily identify individual devices. In my own 1:1 iPad, fifth grade classroom I took advantage of this feature to easily identify the owner of each device. On the first day of school, I always had my students use their cameras to take a "selfie" and set that image as their Lock Screen. My students were required all year to keep a selfie or easily identifiable image as their Lock Screens. Then I allowed them free choice of their Home Screens. This system worked wonders in my classroom because my students enjoyed personalizing their devices and we were always able to quickly identify devices.

Of course, for Kindergarten classrooms their wallpaper screens have to be cute! Many of my school sites have a set of 6 iPads for each TK and Kindergarten room. So we took this personalization system to the next level! (Since selfie images wouldn't really work with shared devices.)

For one class, the teacher wanted the wallpaper screens to be numbered. We used Keynote to create the images. We selected different presentation themes for each device. We enlarged the size the each number to fill most of the screen, then typed the teacher's name smaller and towards the bottom. Once in presentation mode, we screen captured the image. Once the image is in your camera roll, it can be set as your wallpaper. We aligned each image to show the teacher's name only at the very bottom. This way, when the screen is locked, you can view the teacher's name, however, once the device is unlocked, you can no longer can see their name. Many of our schools in our district are No Excuse Universities, and are apart of the No Excuses Network. Each classroom at these school sites have adopted a college. For these teachers, we searched for their college logos and saved these images into their camera roll. To customize the image further, we added the image into Keynote to add the device number and teacher's name. Now we have class sets of iPads that look uniquely personalized.

Here are a few of the iPad wallpaper set ups that I have helped my Kinder teachers use in their classrooms.

Also, if devices are stored in lockers, the locker slots can be labeled and help with collection and distribution of devices. If your devices are shared, this system could help assign groups of students to the same iPad each time they use the device.