Students Send me Articles and Movies

We are loving the all iPad classroom. Students recently have been sending me articles and movies about science that they find online. They are initiating doing so, without being given that assignment. Today, a student emailed a movie of an experiment done on the International Space Station, about wringing a wet towel in space. What happens to the water droplets? We decided to show the class the video tomorrow, after asking the students to write their hypotheses. Just thrilled to see students eager to research science topics, utilizing these innovative tools!

Readworks Articles

I'm finding some cool nonfiction articles to attach on Edmodo for my students to read, using Readworks.org. So, as we are reading the novel Island of the Blue Dolphins, I'm pairing articles about animals mentioned in the story to do close reading activities with my fourth grade reading group. Lexile levels are included in each article description, and question sets can be printed in PDF format for quizzes. 

Compatibility with Edmodo makes distributing the articles so much easier than printing copies. Maybe soon I will really will be paperless!

Everyday I learn Something New!

I had an idea to start the new year with my students, talking about apps and sites I had discovered. My surprise was that my students had more to share with me than I had to share with them. So cool to learn something new everyday!

Sock puppets are sock puppets that you can make talk, and save into a movie. So funny and cute!

Then flipagram is a nice little slideshow app, that you add music to, that is so simple it's breathtaking! Nice, nice week with new realizations for me!

QR code on my Christmas cards!

Well, I wonder if everyone who got our Christmas card this year, got our card this year. I attached a QR code to a photo card I had made by Shutterfly. The code, when scanned, shows our family collage photos with music in the background, details about each photo written on the photo, and events in our lives this year. It's an iMovie that goes with the Christmas card. Doesn't hurt that Justin Timberlake's Mirrors song is the background music!

I have heard from a few friends that they got the QR code, scanned, watched, and loved the card! One pal says to tell my husband that we win for best Christmas card, because of the QR code idea! I told him next year the whole card will just be a QR code!