Tech is great but...

When the little things in your room start to happen that have nothing to do with tech, your heart begins to jump for joy. Sorry this post has absolutely NOTHING to do with tech but rather with the gains that my students are making despite the technology. 

My students this year have a wide range of needs ranging from visual impairments to autism, to needing a communication device, to cognitive disabilities. It is by far one of my more challenging years as an educator when it comes to meeting their needs, moving them forward and helping to coordinate the number of support staff that travel in and out of my room in the course of a day (at last count I had more than 14 individuals that work with my students in some capacity!) I have had many a day that I have come home and sobbed, felt like I am not an effective educator or contemplated how much longer I could do what I do... but then..... the wonderful happens....

you step back and begin to notice the little things such as:

1) My visually impaired student for the 1st time turned and pair-shared ON HIS OWN without a reminder and got himself right in the thick of the conversation! Awesome!!

2) My little guy who needs a communication device has gotten harder to understand recently but when stepping back... it's not because he's regressed, it's because he is talking soooooo much more that I just can't keep up with him. What a wonderful feeling to know he is that comfortable in my classroom to communicate without his device!

3) One of my CD students has made some really nice gains with her letter/sounds and is making progress in how to use a socially acceptable voice level when needing to talk to others. Just reminding her to use a soft voice, has started to pay off.

4) Another of my students learned to zip her jacket on her own last week. We jumped for joy and hooted and hollered to the point that the secretary came out to see what the commotion was all about. What a huge jump of independence for this little one!

5) Their independent skills have grown to the point that I feel we can finally do many of the things that we would normally tackle in November.... better late than never!

6) The room is beginning to have a hum of camaraderie, togetherness and helpfulness... everyone is accepting of everyone's strengths, weaknesses and differences! We are truly a school family- and that includes all of the adults that work in the room!

I know these seem so small but if you spent a few days in my room, you too would realize how BIG these small things truly are. 

That's why I am writing this post.... so I can come back and reread this post every time I have "one of those days"... you know, the ones when you go home and think there is nothing positive happening....the ones that make you wonder if you are in the right profession even though you can't possibly imagine doing anything else. The ones that have you staying up late pondering what else you can do to get a student to learn his letters and sounds short of standing on your head while wearing a red nose and singing the alphabet song. (Hmmm... I may have to try that one actually)

Teaching truly is a work or heart and I love what I do... the kids are truly the heart of what we do day to day (no pun intended being that this post is being written on Valentine's Day!) sometimes you  I just need to step back and relish the small things.  Thank you my young friends for helping me to again realize why I love what I do!

*Updated to add: One of my little guys today FINALLY learned how to tie his shoes independently!! SO Exciting... watching him today persevere on this task when normally he would come up and put his foot in your face and say, "Help me" was unbelievable! It truly was the icing on the cake today!

Pushes and Pulls

We are currently studying forces and motion in science. As part of our unit, we study the difference between pushes and pulls. Today kiddos partnered up and took 3 pictures of each with their partners and then created a PicCollage with their examples.

Although it was a bit chaotic, the best part of this lesson was that each of my kiddos had to team up with a student from another class that had never used PicCollage before which meant that they not only had to show what they knew about pushes and pulls, but they had to use what they knew about PicCollage to teach a friend how to use the app as well. I have to say, I was very proud of how well my kiddos took on this task. :-)

Skitch'in penguins

We have been wrapping our unit on informational writing this week by studying penguins. Kiddos spent some time working with a partner to read the National Geographic eBook, Penguins. While they were reading they took notes on interesting facts. We then used these notes to create an informational paragraph about penguins. 

We are now using our paragraphs to create a digital version of our research. As I mentioned earlier in the week, we used Popplet to web what we knew about penguins. Today, we again used the Pics4Learning site for copyright-free images of penguins- you can read more about this site here. We then imported our images into an app called, Skitch where students then labeled various features of penguins. These diagrams, along with our Popplets, will be inserted into our Doodlecast stories.
Skitch was very easy to use and students were able to independently use this app after just a brief introduction. The whole process of showing the app, discussing appropriate image selection (things such as image quality and size), finding and importing our images and then labeling took most 30 minutes. This was the 1st time we have used Skitch so I was happy with that time frame. I've found that with most apps, by the time we use them for the 3rd time, kiddos are flying through independently.

Mr Popplet's penguins

We've been researching penguins in our class this past week. As part of our research we used the Popplet lite app to record what we know about penguins. Students went to the Pics 4 Learning site that I mentioned here to choose a  picture of a penguin to use as the center of their web. They then listed penguin facts around their pictures. The lite app only allows you to do one Popple at a time so once kiddos are done, they simply screen shot their Popple and then we are good to go again. This can sometimes be a bit of an inconvenience when kiddos don't finish in one sitting and others are waiting to do their Popple.  The Popplet app solves this problem as you can create, save, and come back to Popples as needed. You can even export as pdf and jpegs. The downfall, the full version costs $4.99. On a school budget, the cost outweighs the convenience- so we deal with having to take screen shots.

The app itself is very easy to use and my kiddos have gotten better and faster at creating their Popples. I even have kiddos asking if they can use it during indoor recess. 

DoodlecastPro and Writing

This week during our writing time we have been working on writing informational pieces. We read a book about coyotes and took notes as we went. After collecting and sorting out our notes, kiddos chose three facts that they found most interesting. They then took their facts and wrote an informational paragraph with a topic sentence, 3 details (facts) and a conclusion sentence.
When we were done, students used the site, Pics4learning.com to find a picture of a coyote which they then uploaded to the DoodlecastPro app. Once this was done, they voice recorded themselves reading their informational piece and shared it with their parents. I am hoping to do a lot more with students recording their writing when they are done as it was extremely motivating for them and was a wonderful way for us to share with our parents. In addition, it gives us an opportunity to go back and reflect on where we started and how far we have come with our writing, reading, and technology skills over the course of the year.

Copyright free images for education

The site above is the site that my class is currently using to find copyright-free images for our technology projects. So often, teachers will have their students simply find images on the web and copy/paste them to their projects. While this is easy and produces many options, it is also illegal. I feel strongly about teaching students to do it the correct way from the beginning. 
To help my students access this site, I simply wrote a post on our classroom blog with a link to the site (our blog is an icon in our home row so is easy for students to access. I use my blog not only as an information area for parents, but also as a portal for my students to get to where they need to go). Once students were on the site, we saved the site as an icon on our iPads which will now make it extremely easy for them to access this site at all times at school. I also linked this site in the sidebar of my classroom blog for students to access at home. Parents were alerted to this site via the classroom blog as well.