Kickin Off Giveaway Day!

The huge giveaway is finally here! Enter today!

Good luck!!!

 

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Gaming It Up

This is the last week of the Linky Party before the Diggin' Giveaway! This giveaway is going to be GINORMOUS!

Make sure you enter!

As this is the last week of the Linky Party, we get to chose our own topics! We decided to post on our latest Pinterest inspired classroom hack. Instead of doing another frame wall, we created a Game Wall! This way our board games can help decorate our classroom, we can have easy access to them, and they take up less of that precious space in our classroom closets.

Start with some fun boardgames for your classroom. They can be educational or just plain fun! Keep the essentials and recycle the rest. The frames we used are the Nyttja 19.75" x 19.75" black frames from IKEA. They cost only $7.99 each! We chose them because they are light weight, have a nice design, we liked that they are square, they're make with plastic and not glass, and they're cheap! We chose a frame with a plastic inside and not glass just in case it gets dropped. Don't want broken glass everywhere! We wanted the students to be able to take the games off of the wall themselves. The frames were hung with Command Medium Picture Hanging Strips. Easy to hang and won't mess up our walls. Just place the game board inside the frame as you would a picture and attach a zippered pencil case on the back with either more Command Picture Hanging Strips or velcro, we decided to go with velcro as it is much cheaper. Place your boardgames pieces and cards inside the zippered pencil case, hang, and you're ready to start playing! We also placed an "I Can" statement in the frame with each board game.

 

 

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Tech Or Treat!

This week's topic is technology. I absolutely love technology! I love using it in my day to day life and I especially love using it in the classroom! Here are a few tricks that I have used in the past to incorporate iPads into the classroom with a 1:1 iPad to student ratio.

Every morning as a part of the students' morning routine, they would collect their iPads from the secure storage and charging station and place their iPads in their seat sacks on the back of their chairs. This would allow the iPads to be easily accessible throughout the day as well as out of the way in a place where they would be unlikely to be damaged when they were not being used. The students also kept their headphones on their seat sacks. *Side note: I recommend using headphones instead of earbuds as earbuds seemed to constantly be getting tangled up and broken.

As a part of cleaning up at the end of the school day, the students were responsible for returning their iPads to the secure charging cart. Each student was assigned an iPad with the same number as their student number and had a specific slot within the cart so it was very quick to see who's iPad was missing from the cart at the end of the day. I did not have my students plug their iPads in to charge them. They simply placed them in the slot with the charger side facing out. Typically I would only charge the iPads once a week (Thursday nights). I chose to charge them on Thursday nights instead of Friday nights because I didn't want them to be plugged in and potentially charging all weekend long. Most of the time this was all I had to do. Occasionally we would use the iPads more or something else would happen and I would need to charge them again. I also taught the students how to read and monitor their iPads' battery life. They were in charge of letting me know when it got below 10% and needed to be charged. It was great! I love natural consequences. If the students weren't responsible and watching their batteries, then they wouldn't be able to use them when they wanted to.

The uses for the iPad within the classroom are endless! With so many options, you may want to start small. I really enjoyed using them during Daily 5. I created folders on each iPad and labeled them Listen to Reading, Word Work, Work on Writing, etc. Then, when the students made their choice for that session, they could go to apps within that choice's folder. Folders are a great way to organize the apps within the iPads and make it easy to assign subjects or topics but also allow the students' choice.

What are some technology tricks that you use in your classroom?

Check out the other technology posts for this week.

 

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