Using Explain Everything To Practice Fluency

Explain Everything is one of the most versatile apps we use in our classroom! Explain Everything is a whiteboard and screencasting app that is great for flipping the learning in your classroom or using a blended learning approach. It's great for creating informational videos and how to videos. Currently, we are using Explain Everything to practice our fluency. I can't take credit for this genius idea! This idea was shared on Twitter and I knew immediately we had to try this! You could also do something similar using the iPad camera.

Step 1: In Explain Everything, take a picture of a page in your "just right" book.

Step 2: Record yourself reading the page for 1 minute.

Step 3: Listen to your recording so you can hear yourself read.

Step 4: Practice reading that page 3 times.

Step 5: Recording yourself again, reading the same page. Do you sound more fluent? Where you able to read more words? Did you expression and intonation?

My students are begging me to practice fluency, even students who don't like to read aloud!

Using iPads in the Classroom

I asked my 4th graders how using iPads has influenced their learning. Students had to respond to the following prompt...

Using iPads makes learning (more)...

I gathered all their responses and created a Wordle! 

Wordle creates visually appealing "word clouds" based on the text you provide. Words that appear more frequently are larger and stand out more. In our Wordle fun and exciting were used frequently so they appear larger than the other words. You can change the font, layout, color etc in each word cloud. 

Here are some suggestions for using Wordle in your classroom...

Character Traits - Wordles can be created around a character in a book. Students could create a Wordle with traits that describe their character.

Classroom Rules - At Kittredge we ask students to follow KES (Kind and Respectful, Everyone Ready to Learn and Safe). Wordles could be created to show what KES looks like/sounds like. *I've also created Wordles with every students name to frame in our classroom.

To find out what words/ideas are being emphasized in a speech - Copy and paste Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have A Dream Speech into Wordle to find the words/ideas that were emphasized. They would be the words that appear larger than the others. Former presidents' speeches would be another text to to copy into Wordle. 

Student Essays - Have students copy their essay into Wordle to see if they use certain words too often. 

The possibilities are endless! 

Extreme Weather Books

We have finally concluded our second unit in Lucy Calkin's Reading Workshop! The focus of this unit was reading non-fiction text. The second bend of the unit asks students to research and create books on extreme weather. We used the app Book Creator to create our books. Students spent about 4 weeks research information using books and websites. Students spent a few days finding text features that would support the information in each chapter of their book. We also spent a few days talking about copyright and using sources from the internet correctly. Here is a link to our Google site which hosts the books!