It can be tough to keep reading skills and math facts fresh all summer long so you don't fall into that summer slide before the next school year. That is why Valley View is making it their goal to provide resources for parents and students to keep it fresh all summer long. Please use the Summer Sites letter from the computer lab as one more resource to great sites which can help keep reading and math fresh in your mind between dips in the pool and playing baseball with you friends. Don't forget to seize the summer and keep learning.
If you are looking for a great link to help you stay focused on reading over the summer months, try www.rif.org. They have oodles of book recommendations and activities to try with your child. As a mom, one of my favorite parts of the site is the calendar of daily activities that revolve around family time and reading. Just take a look at May's calendar below.
I just love the activities and how they often correlate to a specific event like the birthday of an author. Reading is Fundamental really did a great job here. I can't wait to begin my daily activities with my kids this summer!
For more calendars and other great ideas related to reading visit www.rif.org.
VoiceThread is a great tool for sharing information and giving students a voice…literally. I tried this tool with my kindergarten students and was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was. My main disappointment was the cost. Though some of my research showed that a single educator account for VoiceThread was free, when I went to register I saw that the single educator license was $79 a year. The educator account offers the option to create student accounts and set privacy controls to private if so desired. If cost is an issue, they do offer a free account which is worth exploring. Under the free account, you are able to create 5 VoiceThreads, however the privacy controls are set to public so be careful.
Since I was using this with Kindergarten, I created the free account and had students work on a class VoiceThread. We created a “Did You Know?” assignment about plants. I like that this tool helped our students work on their speaking skills. Since each “Did you know?” sentence was a question, we talked about how your voice changes slightly at the end of a question. Students were able to record with ease and hear back their comments. VoiceThread also has a video comment option which can be a valuable tool for students who are hearing impaired as they can comment using sign language. It is important to keep in mind that with the free account, the video comment created would be public. Because of this, we stuck to voice comments. VoiceThreads can be used to enhance literacy development, promote critical debate, and showcase valuable work. It certainly seems to be a tool that many educators should consider using. I may even invest in the educator account next year. The technology appears to be worth the $79 cost. Check out our VoiceThread below and feel free to make a voice comment yourself! As you may already know, our first graders are soon entering their science unit, All About Frogs. During this unit they will be observing tadpoles to help them learn more about the life cycle of a frog. They will also be reading books about frogs, comparing frogs and toads, and creating life cycle videos in the computer lab. In order to share all of the amazing things we are going to be doing and learning, we have created a first grade frog blog. This blog will be updated by the students in each class on a monthly basis. The blog will have posts from all 3 of the classes, however the title of the post will let you know which class it is being posted from.
Please feel free to comment on our posts to keep us motivated to share more. If you have a Google + account, commenting will be easy. Simply type your comment and click publish. If you do not have a Google+ account, when you add a comment it will ask you how you who you want to comment as. You can choose the drop down arrow under the comment and select unknown. After you write your comment, click publish. Then you will be asked to verify you are not a robot and then click publish again. Please let me know if you have any issues. We look forward to giving you a peek into our classrooms. https://vv1frogblog.blogspot.com/ |
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February 2017
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