Smartboard Saturday: Kidspiration

In the past few weeks, we have been learning all about life cycles. An awesome software to use when creating life cycles, or any other kind of graphic organizers, is Kidspiration, a K-5 version of the Inspiration software.

This software can be used for much more than graphic organizers, however. Students use the graphic organizers to expand on their thoughts in the Writing View. In the Math View, students use manipulatives to explore concepts such as counting, place and value, and fractions.

When paired with the Smartboard, Kidspiration becomes an awesome tool for whole group lessons. It is also great for a center-time activity, giving children the opportunity to explore a ready-made activity, or elaborate more on an idea that was discussed in an earlier lesson.

My favorite part however, is the free trial. There is nothing like checking something out for yourself, so check it out!

Smartboard Saturday: Nonsense Words

It is a fine line that most teachers walk  to teach the skills that are assessed, but not "teach to the test." In our state, we use DIBELS as an assessment. During one section of this test, students are asked to sound out or read nonsense words. This is a difficult task for many students, mainly because they want to recode the nonsense word into a "real" word.

On a tip from a friend, I started to use my Smartboard to do quick nonsense word exercises. In the Gallery of the Smart Notebook software, there are consonant and vowel dice. I pulled three dice in a CVC format onto a blank page, and let me children touch and roll. They LOVED it. We sound out all the sounds, recode into the word, and discuss if it is a real word or a silly word. Now, it is part of our transition from Morning Meeting to our Reading Block.

Tip: Use the search bar to find specific things in the Gallery, i.e. type "dice" to find CVC , blank, number, or dot dice.

We're back!

So I was too exhausted to post on our first official day back from Spring Break, so here is a quick recap:

Our schedule has been overhauled to accommodate centers twice a day, literacy in the morning and developmental in the afternoon. It was chaos for a bit, however, it smoothed out and I was able to work with two reading groups and informally assess where we are. My superkids totally blew me away with their reading; we are exactly on target for Spring (which is a pretty big deal considering they had a string of subs until October when I was hired)! Ms. M, our literacy coach, returned to our class, much to the delight of my budding sprouts. We learned, we laughed, we played, and it was a fantastic start to the last quarter.

Today, we added to our numbers, bringing our class count back up to twenty. Our new friend was shy, but was welcomed warmly, and soon felt at ease. Again, chaos ensued when it was center time, but we figured it out and got down to business.

I realize this is not a very detailed post, however, I am one tired teacher. I will try to do better on the morrow.