Calendar/warm-up Videos kids love

I confess I never used the videos I posted last summer. They seemed too simple for my first graders. However, my fellow teammate found some great videos to use during calendar and math warm-up time that my kids absolutely loved. Here they are:

Thoughts on education

I recently took a class on the foundations of our current public educational system. At a faculty meeting in May, my principal shared this video, and it really brought some of the concepts I learned to life. I thought I would share it.

Reflections: Life After 11 Tools

Favorite Tools:
Blogger I hope to create a class blog that will highlight a Student of the Day as a "Getting to Know You" activity.
Google Docs/Wikis (for teacher sharing)
iMovie (for digital stories)

Now that I've had the opportunity to learn about & use some of the resources on the web, I feel more confident with the idea of using them in the classroom. While I will probably use just a few with my kids, I will most likely use most of them in my personal and professional lives.

Hmm... unexpected outcomes? Well, I guess you could say I didn't expect to become a better social networker, blogger, and commenter. The article on commenting and video on digital etiquette really resonated with me. I am forever changed.

Jing & Skype (Tool 9)...Yes, I did this out of order.

Jing seems like a pretty cool service. It is a great way to upload pictures to blogs without worrying about the size or format of the file. Also, because the file is saved to an online database, it doesn't take a long time to load pages that have the photos/videos. Kids could use Jing when doing research projects, field trips reports, and when adding to the class blog.

Skype is also pretty cool. I think it would be awesome to use Skype to interview community helpers &/leaders when studying them in Social Studies.

However, it would be supercool to interview published authors! Readers, do you think authors of children's literature would be willing to Skype with a class of cute 1st graders? Eric Carle, Mo Willems, Jeff Kinney, or Cynthia Rylant, if you're reading this, what do you think? Would you be willing to Skype with a bunch of adoring teacup humans that love reading your books over and over again?

Digital Citizenship (Tool 11)

Wow! I haven't even finished watching the Brainpop video on Digital Etiquette, and I already have so many thoughts running through my head. I have come across a couple of "trolls" online. It is very off-putting and upsets me when I see "flaming" comments. I really wish some people would think a little more before posting their thoughts.

Luckily, the first unit in Social Studies for 1st grade is citizenship. This would be the perfect time to talk about being a "citizen of the digital world." After teaching what it means to be a citizen of the class, school, and community, I would introduce the term digital citizenship. After guiding the kids a bit, they should see the connection of being a good "digital" citizen. Then, I would show different videos on Brainpop and, through shared writing, create an anchor chart of "How to be a smart digital citizen."

My Top 3 Things to Teach:
1) Digital etiquette
2) Blogging
3) Searching online sources

iPod apps (iTool 10)

So, I am posting out of order. I like to mix things up a bit, at times. I liked the pdf listing apps for possible education use. I ended up downloading quite a few apps to my ipod touch. the Math Missing Numbers game would be a fun game for primary students. It has addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. There are also different levels that kids can choose from. Can you say, "Differentiation?"

Calendar time! (Tool 8: Part 2)

I think videos are great resources that help children see how things work. On a personal level, I have used online videos to help me learn new knitting skills. Sometimes just reading about it is not enough. Anyway, the videos I chose for this assignment will be helpful during daily calendar routines.

"Months of the Year"


"Days of the Week"


Here is a shorter "Days of the Week" video.