☔️ April Showers Brings #EpicPals Awesomeness! 📱📚

Our April EpicPals primary and intermediate collections

 are ready and waiting for you. 

Check it out~ 

Decorah Eagle Webcam

This month's Read-to-Me Flipgrid/Padlet selection is about Bald Eagles and includes a link to the Decorah, Iowa Eagle webcam. If you've not seen this site before, it's a MUST see. What a great way to bring the outdoors into your classroom!

New this month~  Padlet has some phenomenal updates which will allow your students to draw, take pictures, leave an audio or video post right in the app/online simply by clicking the 3 vertical dots on their post! I encourage you to share one or several of these new upgrades with your students to allow them to take more ownership of their posts. 

Also new this month~  I have also turned on comments this month on the Patterns in the City book in hopes of having students have a more authentic audience. Students will be able to share a picture of a pattern that they found in their classroom and also leave a comment under others' posts about the pattern that they see. I've left a sample on the board for you to share with your students. 

As always, encourage your students to read others' posts and if they like their post, have them click on the heart at the bottom of the sticky note. Being reflective and having an authentic reason to like something is a great first step towards leaving meaningful and authentic feedback. 

We encourage you to have conversations with your students on what constitutes a good post and how to be a good digital citizen when working online. You can find several resources to help you with these conversations on this previous blog post. 

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If you ever have any questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to us. You can find both of us on Twitter- @smalchow (primary boards) and @bhopteacher (intermediate boards)

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New to EpicPals and need some additional information? If so, head on over the the
 #EpicPals page at the top of the blog for additional information.

Malchow's Tech Bytes ~ March 19th

Hi all!
I hope you enjoy this week's Tech Bytes. To access the clickable links, please click on the link below to access the file. All items with pointing fingers are clickable. 

Malchow's Tech Bytes~ March 19th

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☘️St. Patrick's Day Project ~ #SPDProject18 ☘️

St. Patrick's Day is just around and I couldn't be more excited.This is one of my favorite holidays (I'm a wee bit Scotch-Irish love the wearin' o' the green!) There were always a few shenanigans going on in my classroom this time of year... those gosh darn leprechauns, always causing trouble thinking that I had stole some of their gold. 😉☘️🌈

One of my favorite activities to part in though was the Lucky Charms graphing project that Jen Wagner hosted on her ProjectsByJen site. (If you've not checked her site out, you definitely need to take a peek. She runs some fantastic collaborative projects that will get you connecting outside the four walls of your classroom!)  Needless to say, Jen was not planning to continue the St Patrick's Day project and I just couldn't bear to see it die... so.... I've taken over the reins and am super excited to continue this fantastic opportunity for our youngest learners! 

https://stpatricksdaygraphing.weebly.com/

For those not familiar with the project, it involves having your students sort the marshmallow shapes from a box of Lucky Charms cereal. As a group we are working to try and prove that there are more ☘️green clovers☘️ than any other shape. 

This project covers multiple standards (which you can find on the site) including: 1:1 correspondence, sorting, graphing, and analyzing data. By participating in the project, you'll also be covering several of the new ISTE standards including the Global Collaborator-GC1 standard.







Also included this year is a coordinating Flipgrid board where your students can participate in several topics such as creating a math problem for others to solve, using their marshmallow pieces to create a story or simply share their favorite marshmallow piece.  






We have over 140 classrooms already signed up to take part and would love to see your 4K-3 classroom join us. For more information, or to register, check out the official St Patrick's Day Project website~ 
☘️🌈  https://stpatricksdaygraphing.weebly.com/ ☘️🌈 our hashtag is: #SPDProject18 ☘️🌈

View St. Patrick's Day Project Participant Locations in a full screen map

Tech Bytes~ March 12-16th

Malchow's Tech Bytes~ March 12th

Malchow's Tech Bytes~ St. Patrick's Day edition

Hard to believe it is March already which means my favorite holiday is just around the corner.... St. Patrick's Day! 

Check out this week's Tech Bytes for several St. Patrick's Day resources including a collaborative Lucky Charms graphing project for 4K- 3rd grade students!

Malchow's Tech Bytes~ March 5th