Handouts — Simple Classroom Workflow Miss Wiebe's 5th Grade

5th graders in Miss Wiebe's class used a new app this week called Handouts. Handouts is similar to notability but paired way down.  Teachers can easily distribute digital worksheets to their students, students complete by annotating with a text box or pen, send back to the teacher, teacher grades in the app and sends feedback to students.  Overall the app worked great.  We are working with the company to overcome a few minor registration issues.  Students loved working digitally and teachers love less paperwork to tote home to grade!

HMS Advanced Tech Robots Up and Running!

Exciting week for HMS Advanced Technology class...7th and 8th graders from Mrs. Yoder and I's class successfully built their first Vex robot.  Challenges came this week with the first build, but with a little trouble-shooting from the students, they were able to create a working robot and have their first competition.  They were excited to learn Mr. Foreman teaches this as a year-long class they can take at the high school!  Several students are attending their competitions as spectators.

Miss Wiebe's 5th Grade Social Studies on the iPad

Miss Wiebe's 5th graders recently used QR codes to help them review their "Comparing the Colonies" content.  Questions were posted around the hallways and QR codes were available for them to scan and check their answers to the review questions. They learned about the Pilgrims journey from England to Plymouth and how they had to cooperate with American Indians in the New World.  They also explored artifacts from a sunken ship.  QR codes are easy to create and a great way to quickly get students to a website or other information.

3rd Grade Uses ThingLink App to Teach Fractions

ThingLink is a technology that can be used K-12 to add "hotspots" to images.  There is both an app as well as a website (https://www.thinglink.com/).  3rd grade recently used it for Math, specifically for fractions, in the following way.  Students wrote a fraction on their desk and took a picture of it for their main image.  Text hotspots were added to label the parts of the fraction (numerator/denominator), an image hotspot was added to their ThingLink by taking a picture representation of the fraction they had written.  A video hotspot was added that included an explanation of them speaking about their fraction, its parts and what it represented. The kids loved it and the teachers were able to assess the unit. This was a lead-in to us using it for their Kansas Communities project next week.  Check back to see those!  Check out ThingLink to see example projects or talk with me about how we could use it in your classroom!

Mrs. Funk's Elementary Music-Study Island

Study Island is in full swing throughout the district...the high school received additional training on our School Improvement Day from myself and Mrs. Cassidy (5th Grade Math).  There are several "experts" throughout the district who are using it daily so let me know if you need any additional assistance.  Mrs. Funk, in elementary music (2nd-4th grade), recently had her students complete a writing prompt in Study Island as a way of assessing their music knowledge.  Classroom elementary teachers were able to look at the results and view the writing responses from the students.  The information provided great insight and sparked writing across the curriculum discussions (a current focus in our district).  Study Island can be a great tool for pre and post testing allowing differentiation of instruction and easy to read data.