Using the iTouches for learning sight words

I don't know about you, but I have more fun teaching sight words (or high frequency words) than almost anything else. Sounds silly, doesn't it? Teaching something so ordinary and necessary and simple, and having it be crazy cool? Part of the reason is that there are so many opportunities for using technology while teaching those boring high-frequency words; let's face it - we know that tech sells, and we have huge kid buy-in when we bring it out. Why not combine the two and see where it goes?

I started with Powerpoints of the 5 new sight words I introduce every week. Once I created the first one, it was easy to edit and save the next week's words. The best trick I learned was to throw a fun picture in the background. Changing up the characters each week gives the kids a surprise to look forward each Monday. By using animations and transisions, the letters come up one at a time, and we read them as they appear. When the whole word is present we read the word together.

sample sight word powerpoint video
Please do not share this video, the images are copyrighted and are used for my personal use only.

If you'd like a base file to start with, I have a plain one you can download for free here. You can go to "view>slidemaster" and change the font, the font color, and add an image in the background (make sure you sent it to the back so it doesn't cover your words)!

With PowerPoint you can save a slideshow as a video, which means you can load it onto an iTouch. This week my kids will be able to choose from 16 weeks of sight word clips, as well as some other sight word videos (this next part is what really got me excited about using the iTouches this week!) Did you know that you can find zillions of phonics-based songs and skits on YouTube? They come from our favorite shows, such as Between the Lions, but also from artists who are mostly unknown. I searched for videos that are essentially sight word songs, and then I used Keep Vid (a free internet program) to download the videos onto my laptop. By using KeepVid you don't have to have access to the internet to view the videos, and it is especially useful if your firewall protection blocks you from using YouTube at school. One of my favorite things to do is set up a Smartboard document with my learning target first, a short video on whatever we are learning about, and then an engaging activity we can do together. You can just drop those videos you have downloaded using KeepVid into the Smartboard page. Here is a sample video that I will be throwing on the iTouches this week with the PowerPoint sight word videos.

Words, by A. J. Jenkins

I can't wait to watch my kids using the iTouches this week. I'm going to do a check with one of my little ones who is struggle with sight words and see if she can read more of them by the end of the week if she used the iTouch each day this week. That would be so totally cool if it helped her learn them quicker.

Daily 5 gets a face lift

Our family just returned from spending Christmas at Disney. Have you ever been? To say it's magical is an understatement. My sister, brother-in-law, husband and I surprised our 4 girls by giving them t-shirts that said "I'm going Disney World for Christmas". They unwrapped them minutes before we whisked them off to the airport. It was exactly what I needed after a rough fall; I smiled every minute of every day for 6 days. I feel so unbelievably refreshed. Laughter is indeed the best medicine.

While I promised my family (and more importantly, myself) that I wouldn't think about teaching while we were at Disney, I came home inspired. I decided that it was time to make learning magical and fun again.

If you've read my previous posts this fall, you'll know that we've been in learning lock-down. A big part of what finally got us on the learning track was the "no stimulation"  plan I put my firsties on. What had always worked with my other classes simply did not work with this one. On the flight home I began to think seriously about how I could keep the teaching ball rolling, but make my students thrown down their cereal spoons and rush off to school every morning.

The one area that I had reduced down to a simple stock was our Daily 5 routine. We had gone from free choice of a lovely variety to whole-group activities. As I began thinking about how I could change it up, I broke up readers workshop into the 4 main areas we, as a class, focus on: reading, working with words, writing, and listening to reading (you'll notice on the wheel that Read to Self is missing. For now, we do this all together at the end of the day). These 4 areas support the learning areas of fluency, accuracy, writing, and some comprehension. Comprehension is still an activity that we do as whole group/guided release. Each area has many activities that we do; as I just said, up until now we have done nearly all of them together at one time. I decided to add some new activities; they will have to be taught and practiced one at a time until I can release them to be done independently. I will lose some instruction time doing this, but it's important to spice things up for the long stretch between Christmas and spring break.

I have 22 students, and the best way I could divide up the 4 D5 areas was to create 24 activities. I used a wheel configuration, because the activities need to rotate, and I needed it to be as easy to do mechanically as possible. I knew that moving clips or clothespins would be too time-consuming for me, and would have me scrambling when what we really need are smooth transitions. The double-faced wheel has a gromit in the middle that holds that names and activities together, and allows quick and easy changing.

Here is the table I used to organize my thoughts about the order of the activities. (You can download my templates at https://sites.google.com/site/mrsmsstuff/matrix) You can alter as you need to, since it's a word doc. The wheel is a bit more difficult to share, since I created it in Adobe Illustrator. I created a blank PDF so that it can be printed, assembled and personalized with drawing and handwriting. You will need to print 8 of the wheel templates; it is broken into a aingle quarter, and you will need a full circle for the names, and a full circle for the activities (simply cut the outer ring off for the inner circle).

As far as adding a little excitement goes, the time has come to finally implement those darn iTouches as well. I have them all set up identically, with videos of the songs and lyrics that we sing in class (to work on fluency). The one exception has the game "Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App", which will be a real treat for the kids once every full rotation.

Now it's just to print, trim, and laminate. Then I'll be ready to relaunch a new and improved D5 guaranteed to spice up our mid-winter.

Headphone Dilemma

I'm getting ready to introduce the iTouches to the kids. The only thing holding me back now is having enough head phones for the kids to wear. Here are my thoughts on having individual sets or class sets:

Expense:

The cheapest I can find headphones are 4.99 a pair. We can't use the ear buds because they are too large to fit into the firstie's ears. I would have to purchase 18 pairs. The kids could all use the same ones, as I've done for the Shuffles. Then I would only need 4 additional pairs.

Asking so much already:

I've already asked for class money to help pay for class parties, but then the small amount I got I used towards ball chairs (that I can no longer use). Should I ask for parents to pitch in for a pair if they don't want their kid to share with others, and then pick up the tab for those who don't? Gotta keep it equitable.

Parent Choice?:

Do I let the parents send in their own, or have a set price and purchase them so they are all the same?

Licing on the Cake:
Um, would you want to share headphones with the Class Lice? I think I would pass.

Just thinking out loud. Would love to hear ideas and suggestions.

Thinking ahead to the short week...I hope it is free of parasites and dog poo. I don't think I can take on much more. I can't imagine what could be next....well, I could, but I won't in case there is some suggestive power of thought.

iTouch, step 2 - Apps

Here's what I have so far:

Glow Draw! and Glow Draw!! ~
This is a free app for finger drawing. Glow Draw! is very very simple, which I like for the age of the kids I teach. But who am I kidding? They can already run my smartboard. Glow Draw!! is more complex, but way cooler with the FX's.

My thinking is that it would be an excellent app for writing sight words and word-family words

Don't Let the Pigeon Run This App ~

NOT free. But for Mo Willems I though I would spring the $6.99. Seriously a splurge, considering my intent was to outfit these suckers for free. It's pretty, graphics are great, and the story telling feature is repetitive but fun. I'm a bit disappointed in the lack of things you can do, but my 12 and 9 yr old have been at it for a half an hour. Great for creating audio stories with a video that is supplied.

VLC Streamer Free~

for playing WMA's. I also downloaded Good Player, which was 99 cents. Both do the same thing so you do the math on which is a better (free) buy.

And now the 12 year old is filling in the Pigeon story with inappropriate words. I would be disgusted if I wasn't trying so hard to stifle my giggles.

iTouch, a step-by-step adventure

As I wrote over the weekend, I came home with 5 shiny new iTouches last Friday. I had been waiting for them since the end of August, and when a fellow teacher walked in with the bag I did a little happy dance. I think I might have actually moon-walked.

They actually scare me a little, though. I ended up calling in the big guns, my friend Brian who is a bonafide Mac fiend. Now I know how to get apps, organize the apps, get videos I made onto the iTouches, and get them them all synced identically.

So far, I have Glow Draw and a MVA player on them.What's next? We'll see.