Free Books for Kids

As a teacher, I value choices for my students in both how they learn and in how they demonstrate that learning. I try to give my students choices about as many things as I can each day, including whether to use technology in their learning or to use more traditional methods. Because I am fortunate enough to now have a classroom set of iPads, I am able to offer the choice of using technology much more often.

Our iPads have apps for math, writing, arts education and many literacy activities, but it bothered me that these devices did not have a good choice for just reading. There are apps available that contain leveled books of some kind, but these books are always a bit contrived. There are also some good “listening to reading” apps available that read stories to the students. The best of these highlight the words as they are read. I appreciate the value of this as part of my literacy program, but I looked in vain for quality books that the students could read on their own.

Finding the Solution

Back in the spring, someone on Twitter shared a link to onehundredfreebooks.com. This site has a constantly changing list of books that are currently free at Amazon. When you click on the link to a book on this site, it takes you right to the Amazon page selling that book and you can then purchase the free book. Because I had the Kindle app installed on my iPad, I could view all of my purchases there. I loved this site for myself. I could try books from authors I had never heard of without spending money on something that might not be as good as I had hoped. Last summer, I noticed that there were sometimes children’s books available. This intrigued me. I wondered about using these books in my classroom. Could this provide me with some choice for my students who like to read on the iPad?

I set up an account and tried it on my student’s iPads, only to discover that a book can only be viewed on a maximum of five devices. After five children had downloaded a book, the other children could see the book in the Kindle app, but not read it. The other children were more than a little disappointed when the Halloween book they wanted to read was not available to them. So I started over.

Making it Work

This time I set up four different accounts. Since all of my iPads are numbered, I set up four gmail and Kindle accounts– accountname1, accountname6, accountname11 and accountname16. I put the Kindle account from accountname1 onto iPads 1 – 5, the account from accountname6 on iPads 6 – 10 and so on.

Then, I started watching for good books on onehundredfreebooks.com. Now, when I see a book I think might interest my students, I first check it out on Amazon. I have a look inside (Amazon provides this option) to see if it is an appropriate reading level, whether the illustrations are good ones, whether the illustrations are supportive of the text—in short all of the things I look for in a paper book. I have learned to NOT purchase any books that do not give you a look inside at the first few pages. If I think the book is worthwhile, I get my student’s iPads that are numbered 1, 6, 11 and 16. These iPads always have their Amazon account open. (This has never been an issue and saves me a lot of time). I choose onehundredfreebooks.com in Safari—and purchase the book on those four iPads. When my students next open their Kindle app, the book will be available to all of them.

I try to check the site a couple of times per week, and if I see something interesting, the whole process takes me about two minutes. Books on this site do disappear without notice, though. More than once I have found an interesting-looking book that has been taken off the site by the time I got to the iPads.

Here is a screenshot of what their Kindle app currently looks like. We have books from a variety of genres and reading levels.

Onehundredfreebooks.com has recently added genre selection to their home page, so I now go directly to their children’s books page and browse all the titles available there.

I appreciate the variety of books I have been able to provide for my students. Now, all of the students have access to a variety of books on their iPads as well as in their self-chosen bin of paper books. During our “read to self” time, the students can choose paper books or digital books. Some choose to read on the iPad every day, some rarely do and some switch back and forth. My students have another choice.

Is There an App for That? Word Work Edition

One of the most often asked questions these days seems to be “what are some good apps?” This is such a difficult question to answer, because the answer depends on the question “what do you want an app to do?”

Don’t get me wrong. I have asked that question as well. Sometimes you get an unexpected answer and you are able to see an application for your classroom that wasn’t immediately obvious to the person you questioned. It’s a fair question. I just don’t think it’s the best question. I think that better questions might be “what is an app you might use to help a child struggling with letter reversals?” or “can you think of an app that will help students to demonstrate their learning?” or “is there an app that you have used to help students understand groupings to make ten?”

The question I’m hoping to answer with this post is “what do you use for word work” or “what are some apps that could help students to learn to spell frequently used words?”

Here are my answers. These are apps I am currently using in my classroom for just that purpose.

DrawFree – (free) This is technically a drawing app not a spelling app, but in my classroom it does double duty. Writing words can be so much more engaging when you get to choose to write with a paint brush, a pencil crayon or a crayon and can also choose from a wide variety of colours. Children can also change the background colour or the thickness of their lines.

Magic Ink – (.99) The more quickly you move your finger, the thicker the lines this app makes. Your letters become gorgeous, with extra swirls thrown in at the end. The magic part is that after a few seconds, your letters disappear, leaving you room to write more words. The length of time the letters stay before disappearing, the colour of the letters and the line thickness are all adjustable in the settings.

Skywrite - (free) As you write the words in the sky, a tiny airplane follows your finger and turns your letters into cloud letters. You can also type the letters into a textbox and the airplane will again make cloud letters for you. (I first learned about Magic Ink and Skywrite from Angie Harrison.)

Word Wizard – (2.99) This app makes the sounds of each letter as you drag them onto the board. As you put the letters beside each other, the app tells you the combined sound. When all of the letters of a word are in place, the child knows it is spelled correctly because it is read aloud to him. There are also lists (CVC words, number words, Dolch words etc.) in the app that are spoken aloud for children to spell. My favourite part of this app is that if you spell a word that is inappropriate in school, the app will say “oops” and return your letters to the bottom of the screen.

This list is by no means definitive, just the apps I have been using so far for this. I do have other spelling apps on our iPads, and since apps that are not yet suitable for my students may be useful to someone else…here is a screenshot of my current Word Work folder.

Word Work Folder

Making “the Cafe” Make Sense for Primary Students

I will forever be indebted to Gail Boushey and Joan Moser, the authors of The Daily Five and The Cafe Book for showing me how it was possible to organize a primary classroom to have an individualized reading program. I have, of course, taken their ideas and adjusted them to fit with my students and my curriculum, but the classroom organization basics have come directly from their ideas.

The part of the Cafe that did not seem to be working well for my students was the terminology on the bulletin board. The students themselves write out the reading strategies as each one is taught, and these strategies are then posted under one of the menu four categories–comprehension, accuracy, fluency and expand vocabulary. If you take the first letter of each category, the letters spell cafe. Thus the title. It’s a great visual reminder, and encompasses the basics of what we teach in reading. These headings make perfect sense for older students, but not for my six and seven year olds, some of whom do not even know what a cafe is.

While I was musing about this, Laura Komos posted on Twitter that she had changed the headings on the bulletin board in her classroom to fit with a theme. I immediately knew that this was the answer. I wanted to change mine to make it more kid-friendly as well.

I wanted a word that made sense to my students, and nothing I could think of made more sense than READ. I also wanted the accuracy aspect to come first on the board, as this is the first focus in my classroom each year. This is what I came up with. (Click on the picture to go to a larger version if it is too small for you.)

Accuracy has become “right words”. Comprehension is now “explain what you read”. Fluency was changed to “able to read smoothly”. Expanding vocabulary has become “discover new words”. The first letters of each category now spell “read”. It still has the four reading components of the cafe menu, but the language used is better suited to younger students.

Feel free to use it if it is useful to you. While I’m pretty confident that this will make more sense to my students than the last bulletin board did, I’m not totally happy with a couple of those headings. If you have a better idea about how to phrase any of them, change it. If you do modify it, I’d love to hear how you adapted it.

Thanks for the inspiration Gail and Joan!

Writing Back to School Letters

Everyone Likes Letters!

Last year I mentioned on Twitter that I had just finished writing letters to my students-to-be. Someone asked me to share the letter, which I did. I was surprised at how many people were interested in that letter, so this year I decided to share it without being asked.

Communicating is what we do all day long as teachers. Doing it well is important to the success of our students and to gaining the understanding and support of their parents. I like to start that communication off well, so every August, I send a letter to my new grade one students. I write to the students because

It gives us a connection before the school year begins. “I got a letter from you!” is a common remark on the first day of school.
Our first contact is positive. It sets the tone for the year.
It creates anticipation.
My pre-readers learn more about communication through the written word.
It gives me a chance to remind them about school supplies which, as you will see by the letters below, is a perennial issue.
Everyone likes to get a letter!

It’s a bit early for this letter to go home, but I have some commitments later this month, so I’ve written out and stuffed the envelopes so they will be ready to go when I want to mail them. The letter has morphed and changed a bit every year, but here is this year’s version.

New Student Letters

Dear Payton,

I’m glad I get to be your teacher this year!

I hope you have been having lots of fun this summer. Did you buy your school supplies yet? Don’t forget to bring them all with you on the first day of school. I’ll put everyone’s supplies together and we’ll share them.

We are going to have an exciting year. You will get your own iPad to use in our classroom and we will get to learn with other classrooms from all over the world. The best thing about grade one, though, is that you learn to read!

I want you to think about what else you would like to learn this year. Then, ask your mom or dad to email me and tell me about it.

On the first day of school, I will meet you in our classroom
(Room 2) at 8:55. Look for the door with pictures of iPads on it.

I’ll see you soon.

Your Grade 1 Teacher,
Mrs. Cassidy

Returning Student Letter

This year I will have a one/two split classroom. Eight grade twos and I will be looping, so they needed their own letter.

Dear Leighton,

I’m so excited that you are going to be in my classroom again this year! I loved watching you learn in grade one and now we can learn even more things together.

You might see some new things in our classroom when you come back in September. You’ll have to wait to see!

I went to some garage sales this summer, and I bought some new books for our classroom library. I’ll put a couple of them that I think you will like into your reading bin to start the school year.

I also bought some new apps for our iPads that I think you will enjoy and will help you to learn. All of the pictures that you took in grade one are still on your iPad and waiting for you.

Don’t forget to bring all of your school supplies with you on the first day of school. We’ll share them again, but be sure to put your name on your scissors and on your headphones or earbuds.

I’ll see you on September the fourth.

Your grade two teacher,

Mrs. Cassidy

Letter to New Parents

Last year, I decided to also write to the parents of my students. I included their letter in the child’s envelope. Here is this year’s version of that parent letter:

Dear Parents,

I’m looking forward to this year and to getting to know your child. You can help me with this.

Before school starts, would you please take the time to email me (cassidy.kathy@prairiesouth.ca) and tell me anything you would like me to know about him or her? With your help, I can better help your child to be successful and happy this year.

Your child may also have ideas about what I should know. I would appreciate it if you would also tell me some things that your child is interested in or passionate about. Sometimes this is dinosaurs, or snakes or Lego or horses…each child is different. This will help me to tap into your child’s interests as he learns to read.

By emailing me, you will also be sharing your email address with me, and I can use that to help keep you up to date about things in our classroom. If you do not have an email address that you use regularly, or would prefer paper copies during the school year, just mail me a letter with the information instead. The address at the school is 1100 Currie Crescent, Moose Jaw S6H 5M8

Watch for information from me very early in the school year about a parent information night.

It is not necessary to put your child’s name on all of his supplies as we will be sharing them. Please do put his/her name on the headphones or earbuds and on the scissors.

I’m anticipating a wonderful year of learning together! Please don’t hesitate to email me with any questions you may have.

Kathy Cassidy

Letter to Parents of Loopers

I decided to also include a letter for the parents of my returning students.

Dear Parent,

I’m very excited to be teaching your child again this year. It has long been a dream of mine to have students for two years in a row as it eliminates all the “getting to know you” phase at the beginning of the year and helps students to quickly feel comfortable and ready to learn. I know your child’s interests and strengths and we can just pick up where we left off at the end of last year. Students also feel more comfortable with someone that they already know. It’s going to be a great year of learning!

Your child will have an iPad to use throughout our school day just as he or she did at the end of last year. I’m looking forward to finding more ways that these devices can enhance learning in our classroom.

It is not necessary to put your child’s name on all of his supplies as we will be sharing them. Please do put his/her name on the headphones or earbuds and on the scissors. that will save us some time on the first day of school

Please don’t hesitate to email me with any questions you may have. Also, if there is anything about your child that you think I do not yet know but should, please contact me about that as well. My email address is still cassidy.kathy@prairiesouth.ca

I’m anticipating a wonderful year of learning together!

Kathy Cassidy

I’m sharing these not because I think they are perfect (the’re not!) but because they may be helpful to someone. I’d love to see letters that other teachers write to their students or parents. Are you willing to share?

Can Six-Year-Olds Really Demonstrate Their Learning?

This article was originally published on the Getting Smart blog.

This week we finished up another one of our project based learning (PBL) or inquiry-based units in my first grade classroom. It had the grand title of rules, relationships and responsibilities.

Why I Let Students Take the Lead in Learning Demonstration

At the end of each of our units, I have the students create an artifactthat can be posted on their blog to show what each of them has learned about our topic of study. I have never been a big supporter of “tests”, especially in first grade, where the students are usually much more comfortable showing learning in a verbal way rather than a written one. As an alternative, I ask the students to create something—a video, a podcast, a drawing—whatever works for that child to best show his learning.

Even as young as six years old, students begin to realize that they are stronger in some areas than others. If I truly want to know what a student knows about a social studies topic, asking for a written paragraph from all of them does not make sense. Only those who are strong writers will do well. The others don’t really have a chance to effectively show me what they know.

Some students do like to write. For them, writing is a successful way to show what they know. Some students can most effectively show their learning in a drawing. For others, a podcast or video is a better choice.

For these reasons, I always let the students chose the way they present their learning. When I first began using PBL in my classroom, I was concerned that the students might only choose their favorite technology for each project we did, without giving thought to how they could truly show their learning in a meaningful way. That has not proved to be the case.

Setting Clear Expectations & Guidelines Promotes Success

Before we began working, we talked about the options that might work well for archiving learning in this unit. Some of the ideas we came up with together included drawing and labeling pictures (digital or with markers, crayons or pastels), writing, making posters, making screencasts, using the Livescribe pen, making videos or making podcasts. I was open to any suggestions that would give the students a chance to clearly articulate what they knew.

We also discussed what needed to be included to make a good project. My school uses four levels of achievement for young students: Limited, Adequate, Meeting and Excellent. We looked at a rubric together so that the students would know exactly what they needed to do to attain each of those levels of achievement. In the past, I have had the students make the rubric with me, but this time I made it ahead of time and asked for their input instead.

Students Exceeded Expectations & Demonstration of Learning

With the expectations clear in their minds, the students set off to make their projects. The choices that the students made to show their learning surprised me. Three students chose to draw digital pictures. These three students also used Audioboo to make a podcast that explained their pictures and learning. None of the students chose to make a screencast on an iPad or to use the Livescribe Pen. None of the students were interested in writing what they knew. (Since they are just emerging writers, this was probably a good choice for them.)

The rest of the students all chose to make a poster. Perhaps it is hard to resist the lure of the beautiful colours of tagboard we have in the classroom. Many of them had chosen to make a poster at the end of another PBL unit we had done, so perhaps it was familiarity that made this an overwhelming choice. Drawing is a comfortable and age appropriate way for six year olds to explain their learning. It is much more difficult to put details into a digital drawing than it is to a drawing on paper using markers or pastels, so again the students made a choice that worked well for them.

Showcasing Student Works Brings Ownership, Pride and Expression to Classroom Learning

Once the students’ posters were complete, we wanted to be able to showcase what the students had done on their blogs, so we made videos of the students explaining what they had chosen to include in their poster. As we recorded their podcasts or videos, the students explained their thinking, and I often asked questions to try to pull out all of the things they knew.

The videos, podcasts and pictures were all uploaded and embedded on the students’ blogs, becoming one more part of each student’s digital portfolio. Their artifact is now visible to their parents, friends and grandparents who might live in a distant city.

The students take great pride in their blogs. They love to show it to anyone who will take the time to look at it with them. The writing and artifacts it contains were created by THEM and show what THEY have learned. A favorite activity is to look at their writing at the beginning of the year and grin as they see the progress they have made. When we are working on something in our classroom, it is common for them to ask “Can we put this on our blogs?” They want to show the world what they can do.

Given the chance, six-year olds can be articulate in explaining their own learning and make appropriate choices to demonstrate what they know. The choices just need to be suitable to their level. For six-year olds, that is often through drawings and oral explanations. Clearly my previous concerns about the students not making good choices were misplaced.

Managing: The Nuts & Bolts of an iPad Classroom

Awhile ago, I wrote about the beginning of the one-to-one iPad journey in my classroom. I have always appreciated when others have shared not only their pedagogy, but the organization of their tools or classroom as well. I’ve also had more people ask me questions about my set-up than how I use iPads to actually teach in my classroom, so here’s my “share”.

Purchasing the iPads was the easy part. Managing them is another matter. Dean Shareski says that “iPads are meant to be owned, not managed.” I think he is correct, but managing them still needs to be done for my grade one students. Managing them is the nuts and bolts that makes our iPad classroom run. Truthfully, the management has turned out to be more work than I imagined. Setting up email on each device (gmail worked the best), syncing apps, updates to firmware, making (and re-making) folders and keeping the devices charged has kept me busy. My IT department has been supportive, but they are clear that this is my job and not theirs. I am not complaining–I wouldn’t trade this opportunity for anything–but it has meant a great deal of learning and planning.

Organizing

Each iPad was named with a number. This number is also written on its case. Initially, I had put numbered stickers onto the iPads, but they began to fall off the first day, so I used a gel pen to write the number right on the iPad case. I have a record of which child goes with which iPad, but I have rarely had to use it. Each student knows their own number as well as many of the numbers of their friends, so if an iPad is not put away correctly, it only takes a moment to find out who it belongs to. This is working, but next year, I think I will put student’s names on stickers on the front of the shelves as well to eliminate my “who didn’t put away their iPad?” questions.

Before we purchased the iPads, the students had been storing their headphones at the other end of the classroom. The students use the iPads and/or headphones over and over during the day so it has proved to be time consuming to be fetching and returning both to two separate places. We now keep their headphones or earbuds on top of their iPad, making getting and putting them away a much quicker process.

Ipad Storage

The iPad shelf in my classroom has become as hot an item for discussion (at least for the adults who visit us) as the iPads themselves. Designed and built by my ever-supportive husband, it has been working exactly as I hoped it would. I had heard from more than one person that iPads are more often broken putting them in and out of a charging station than they are broken when in use. I wanted the students to be as independent as possible in getting, putting away and charging their iPads themselves. (Avoiding the high cost of a cart–not available through my winnings–was also a big factor.)I frequently mused about this and my search for some type of shelving on my daily walk with my husband. Since he had already designed and built a book trolley, a bench and a poster storage unit for my classroom, he began to see the writing on the wall and started making plans. The day we drove to Best Buy to pick up the iPads, we stopped to pick up the wood for the shelves as well.

To power the iPads, I used four Belkin charging stations, which are fastened right onto the back of the shelves. Their size ‘just’ allows for the chargers.

Students Making the Rules

Up to this point, we had had a couple of the original iPads in our classroom, so the students were fairly familiar with their care, but having so many more in use at a time is a different story, so I asked the students to come up with any rules they thought might be necessary to keep our new devices safe. They came up with two:

Use two hands to carry the iPads.
Don’t leave the iPad on the floor. If you have to go to the bathroom or somewhere else, leave the iPad on a table or a counter.

I can’t recall a time I have had to remind any of the students about these two rules. I often hear the students policing the other students themselves. No one wants anything to happen to these engaging devices.

Updates and Adding Apps

Because we chose to not get a charging cart, I instead purchased two 7 Port USB Hubs. Since we have 30 iPads, I sync new apps or do updates in three separate lots of ten iPads. It does take more time, but has saved a lot of money.

Currently, I have to remove ten charging cords from the shelf to do this, but my plan is to purchase ten extra cords that can be left attached to the USB ports. This way, they will be able to be used for easily syncing other iPads in the school with other computers as well.

So for what it is worth, this is how I am “managing” our iPads. It’s like the nitty-gritty of all teaching. You have to deal with report cards, policies that you don’t agree with and lots of frustrations so that you get to do the incredible job of teaching kids. In the same way, you have to take care of the syncing, the storage of the iPads and the frustrations to get to use tools that have such tremendous potential. In both instances, it’s well worth the effort.

As always, I know that there are people doing this better than I am. I’d love to have your input in the comments.

Why My Six-Year-Olds Have Digital Portfolios

This article was originally posted on the Getting Smart blog.

From the first week of school, the six year olds in my classroom begin to create an online presence in the form of a digital portfolio. We use a blogging platform to do this, and include artifacts that show their progress in writing, reading, math, social studies and science.

I am frequently asked why I do this. Even more frequently, I can see in a colleague’s eyes that they are thinking “why”, even if they don’t verbalize their question. The way that those educators have always done portfolios has worked well for them. Their students are learning the things they need to learn and are building a paper portfolio as they do so. Why do I take the extra time to upload those artifacts?

Audience

For any writer or creator, it is all about the audience. Why would a student even want to write on a piece of paper for their teacher to see when they could write on their blog for the world to see?

Because a blog allows comments, the students’ thoughts and learning can be not only read, but responded to as well. Students relish the feedback a comment gives, whether it is from a classmate, a parent, or someone they have never met. The audience becomes part of the student’s learning.

Creating a Community of Ripples

Having a blog creates a community around our classroom. The articles, podcasts, images and video we post are like stones dropped into a pond.

The first ripple in our circle of community is the circle of parents. Parents can watch their child’s blog and observe their child’s progress first hand. They don’t have to wait until our student-led conferences to see what and how their child has been learning. The growth is obvious for them to see.

The next ripple is the circle of the child’s extended family, friends and our local community. They, too can watch, encourage and interact. Often, this circle includes students who have been in my classroom in the past and who come back to our blog to comment and encourage the younger students.

The largest circle is—well—the entire world. We have received comments from many places including many states in the USA, classrooms across Canada, India, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and New Zealand. And those are just this school year.

That is a very large community.

Digital Footprint

Even at a young age, it is important to begin to have an idea of the significance of a digital footprint, including what things are appropriate to post online, how to protect your identity and ways to interact with others in an online space. As my six-year-olds grow up, the world will become increasingly digital. Tools will change, but connectedness will continue to grow. Children need to learn early that it is important to present yourself well online and some of the ways that can be done.

Their Culture

We teach kids that have no concept of a world without the Internet. Technology is a ubiquitous part of their world. They want and expect to use it at home. For me to deny that technology and what it allows them to do would be like asking someone from an earlier generation to learn without a pen or pencil. It just wouldn’t make sense.

Student Conferences

When we have student-led conferences in my classroom, my students use what is posted on their blog as the starting point of our conversation with their parents. Their moms and dads are already familiar with what is posted, and the students are able to focus on sharing what their goals were, what they feel they are doing well and what they want to get better at.

Student Choice

Allowing students to have some choice in what they create/post is important on so many levels. It empowers the students and involves them in their own learning. We teach students who have a plethora of choices as to how they spend their time. In addition to the choices children previously had, they can choose from many types of gaming, hundreds of television channels or video on demand. It only makes sense to give them a sense of choice as to how they show their learning as well.

An online portfolio gives those choices. Students can choose which of the many tools available will best help them to show their learning. Paper is not always the best way to communicate your ideas.

Joy

I will never forget the delight in one of my student’s eyes who had just had a working computer in his home the night before for the first time that school year. “Mrs. Cassidy, I showed my blog to my parents last night. I showed them all my stuff! They liked it!”

That moment of joy was worth the few extra minutes it takes to post my student’s articles online. I know that, although I don’t always hear about it, that moment is repeated over and over in the homes of all of my students, as they are able to share their learning with their parents at home.

Joy is the best reason I use digital portfolios with my young students. We can all use a little more joy.

“I Guess We Really Like the iPads!”

Because I was fortunate enough to win a contest from Best Buy Canada, I got to go on a $20 000 shopping spree last week to purchase technology for my classroom. I chose to buy iPads. Being 1:1 with some sort of device has long been a dream of mine, a dream I was ecstatic to fulfill!

Day One of 1:1

Friday was the big day—the iPads finally arrived in our classroom. To say my students were excited would be a bit of an understatement, but then, so was their teacher.

I don’t want the iPads to just change the way we do things in my classroom. I want them to be transformative. That is, I don’t want to use the iPads to just do things we could have done on paper. An app should not just be a glorified worksheet. I want them to allow us to connect and to work and learn differently. I hope that will happen more and more as time goes on.

Our First App

But for this first day, it was all about fun and about learning some of the possibilities of these new tools. For our first app, I chose Letter Reflex. Almost every child in my classroom is still struggling in their reading to consistently identify b’s and d’s. If you teach kindergarten or first grade, you know this is pretty common. The Letter Reflex app allows students to tilt the iPad to select a b,d, p or q, adding a kinesthetic aspect to learning letters. The students loved the game, and I hope they’ll go back to it often. With so many students trying the game at once, hearing the voice on the app proved to be difficult, so everyone ran to get their headphones. Success, engagement and learning—but no transformation yet.

Creating with the iPads

We next moved to Brushes, a drawing app that was recommended to me by Giulia Forsythe. It is more pricy than some other drawing apps that I could have chosen, but my students spend most of the year learning to read and write something that is readable to people who are not first grade teachers. They show their learning much more often through a drawing than through text. I wanted them to have a great tool that will allow them to show their learning effectively through drawing if that is their choice. The students used this tool to make (and to decorate) the number of their iPad. (I numbered them for organizational purposes.) I helped them to make a screenshot of their drawing, and to set these numbers as their wallpaper and home screen image. I saw this as a higher thinking skill—the students were creating rather than consuming—but not yet transformative.

While the students were not complaining about the restrictiveness of the activities we had done so far, they really wanted to explore on their own, so I let them do just that. Some of them gravitated to games that we had had on the two original iPads that were in our classroom. Others returned to Letter Reflex. Still others began to explore the other enticingly coloured squares they saw on their iPad. They were so engaged, that we all forgot to watch the clock for our gym time (a practically sacred time for my mostly male learners) and missed it entirely.

Taking Pictures–The Highlight

In the afternoon, we had a chat via Skype with a second grade class in Wisconsin about a project we are doing together called A View From the Window. Afterwards, the students and I talked about how we would show them our view. Would we make a movie…draw pictures…take pictures? The students felt that we needed to use a camera, not drawings, so we grabbed our iPads to figure out the camera app. This app is very intuitive, and the students only needed some support to tuck the cover into the back of our cases so that it would not block the camera.

This was their favorite part of the day. We agreed to wait until a sunny day to take pictures out the window for the project, but they joyously took picture after picture of the view from the window, objects in our classroom and each other taking pictures. It was amazing how many pictures some of them were able to take in a few short minutes. One student had dozens of pictures, including sixteen pictures of a computer mouse. Lots of fun, and then, it was time to teach them how to delete unwanted pictures. The student with the most pictures quietly admitted to me that he had taken “too many pictures” and I showed him how to delete them more quickly. The students kept only those photos that they really liked. Most of the students emptied their photo gallery. For them, the fun was in the taking—not yet in the sharing. Sharing pictures—now perhaps that will begin to be more transformative.

My favorite comment from the day was from one of the boys when we realized that our time in the gym had already evaporated while we were so engaged. “Mrs. Cassidy, I guess we really like the iPads”, he said.

I guess they do! We’ll keep on working to make this technology transformative as well as engaging.

Commenting With Pre and Emerging Writers

“For me? There’s a comment for me?” asked an eager five-year-old in my classroom, eyes aglow. I assured him that the comment was indeed for him and read it aloud to he and his classmates, pointing to each word on the Smartboard as I did so. He beamed as I read aloud, marveling at the fact that what he had posted on his blog was valuable enough to provoke a response from someone he had never met.

Ensuring All Students Receive Comments

When my students begin blogging each September, I ensure that they ALL begin getting comments as soon as possible. I hold a parent night and show the parents how to comment. I enlist the help of students who were in my classroom in previous years. Sometimes I have put out a plea on Twitter using the hashtag #comments4kids. I know how encouraging those comments can be, and I want all of my students to have that experience as soon as possible—to feel that rush of acknowledgement a first comment elicits.

Learning to Comment Ourselves

Soon after, I begin teaching my students how to leave comments themselves. With pre-readers and writers, this is a lengthy process! Sometimes we begin by going to the blog of someone who has just left a comment for us. Sometimes we begin by going to the blog of another classroom that is linked from our classroom blog. Wherever and whenever we begin, we always comment together as a group. (With pre readers and writers, this is not just good pedagodgy, it is a necessity!)

We start by talking about the comments we have received, how they made us feel and what was good about them. We want to be able to mimic the best of other people’s comments to us. Almost always, the students want to start by saying “I like your blog”. To help the students to stay on track, and to encourage them to think beyond this over-used phrase, we make an anchor chart to help us remember our discussion. (I first heard the term “anchor chart” from the Two Sisters. It refers to a chart that records a process or strategy and is created WITH the students in their own words. It is then posted in the classroom for the students to use as a reference.)

Commenting Together

To be honest, although this chart is made up by and with my grade one students each year, it does not change a lot from school year to school year. A good comment is still a good comment. Linda Yollis’ students have done some great work explaining how third graders comment, but for my pre and emerging writers, these steps seem to work best. Besides teaching them to comment, they reinforce other concepts my students are just learning.

Say something nice. What specifically did you like about the post? What made you smile?
Make a connection. What did it remind you of? Does it make you think of something you know or have done? Something you saw in a book or on a video? Understanding and making connections is a skill five and six year olds are just beginning to learn.
Ask a question. What do you wonder? What did the writer not include that you wish had been in the article? Understanding the difference between something you tell and something you ask is difficult for most six-year-olds. Including a question helps them to learn what a question is and how to think about someone’s ideas beyond their own.
Re-read your comment. This is a vital skill for commenters of any age. As the students realized how often they needed to change something we had written to make it better, we added this step at the end of our chart.

We follow this pattern pretty closely together for months as they learn the literacy skills necessary to comment on their own. The first independent student comments are often written from home. This year, the first student to comment on the blogs of his peers decided to be “fair” and left a comment for every other child in the class! I make a big deal about these comments, and as with every other comment we receive, we read them aloud together. After one or two students have written comments, the others start to want to do it as well!

Commenting Independently

It is usually near the end of our grade one year when I will actually officially ask all of the students to try making a comment on the blog of their choice. At first, I ask them to show me the comment before they click “submit”, but when they have shown me that they can do this independently, I let them comment on any of the blogs that are linked from our classroom blog, knowing that if there was ever anything inappropriate (to my knowledge there never has been), the teachers we are linked with would contact me. For students whose spelling skills are still developing, I stay close by and if necessary will write an editor’s note in brackets after their comment, in the same way I do with their blog postings.

Do they all follow the pattern that we have practiced together? No. It is a long journey. Learning to comment when you are an emerging writer does take a long time, but learning to read and to write also takes a long time. To me the result—a student who is beginning to understand how to interact with others in a social media situation—is worth the long journey.

Unplug’d 2012–It’s International!

Last summer I had the privilege of participating in Unplugd11, an experience unlike any other I have had. Unplugd11 was an opportunity for educators from across Canada to meet, to reflect and to write together, but it was more than that.

It was the people. Never before had I been in a place where every one of the people present were so passionate about education. Participants gave up their time and paid their own way, flying as far as 4300 km (2700 miles) to get there.

It was the location. We first met at a hotel in downtown Toronto and then travelled by train to a solar-powered experience at Northern Edge Algonquin. This retreat center is on a lake and surrounded by forest. Time seems to stand still there.

It was the fact that we all HAD to unplug. At the Edge, there is no internet access. No cell phone service. No contact with the outside world. There were only rich conversations.

It was the task. Going to Unplugd meant that you had to bring a piece of writing with you. Once there, we were divided into groups that worked on editing and bringing together all of the varied pieces of writing in a collaborative authorship experience.

And yes, it was the food. Mealtimes were a time of relaxed conversation and sharing over delicious organic and locally raised food.

This year, Unplugd is not just for Canadians. Unplugd12 will bring together people from around the world in an international education summit.