Friday, November 30, 2012

Apps for Pre-k students

As a pre-k teacher, and mother of a toddler, I am always looking for fun ways to help my students amd child learn their numbers, letters, shapes, etc. The parents of my students are always asking me for app suggestions, so I decided to do some research. Here is a list of some great apps for our little "tech savy" learners. There are many more, but these are my favorites so far. Please pass these along to fellow primary teachers or parents of little ones.


(Pics from itunes)
Monkey Preschool Lunchbox 
Mokey Preschool Lunchbox: Children fill the monkeys lunchbox while playing matching and sorting activites dealing with numbers, letters, colors.


Preschool Arcade
Preschool Arcade: Games include, ABC Invasion, Pinball 123, Whack a mole, & Claw Crane Matching
 
Starfall-Abc
Starfall: A great website for letter recognition, phonics, reading, and writing. Incorporates games, music, and art. Ages 2 and up. (used everday in my classroom)
 
JumpStart Preschool Magic of Learning
JumpStart Preschool: Magic of learning
Uses 15 games to teach little ones math, pre-reading, and critical thing skills
 
 
 

Saturday, November 24, 2012

I did it!!!!


This week in my technology for educators class we had to create a culminating project based on a digital story for our future or current students. It involved setting us a website via wikispaces, creating a home,curriculum,lesson plan, and rubric page. I felt like I was never going to complete it, but here it is. http://robertspre-k.wikispaces.com/home Please check it out.

Thank you to my readers and commentors for your feedback on the project. I took what you guys said seriously and made some changes. I think one of the biggest challenges was creating a rubric and lesson plan for 2nd graders.  As a pre-k ESE teacher rubrics and Florida sunshine standards do not apply to me. I plan on teaching regular ed in the future, so this assignment was a good stepping stone. I also seemed to have alot of trouble uploading my digital story to both my wiki site and my blog. It must have taken me two hours today to finally get in loaded onto my wikispace. I was so frustrated, but will be able to use what I learned with my future students.  Although I was frustrated at times, creating the digital story itself was a lot of fun. I am still amazed at the technology we have at our fingertips.  I think digital stroytelling is a great tool for all subject areas, especially for reading and writing.  I used microsoft photostory 3 rather than prezi because I felt it was more user friendly for me and younger students. It is a great, free and easy to use program. I highly recommend it. Hope you enjoy the video and learn something new about penguins. :)

Friday, November 9, 2012

Digital Storytelling


The above video is my digital story book on the life of an Emperor Penguin. I am a pre-k ESE teacher, and decided to create a lesson for second graders on the life of penguins. I asked my students to select one type of penguin out of 3 choices. Although the project is mainly for our science class, it also includes the subject areas of reading and technology.  I asked students to research their penguin via websites and links on our curriculum page.  Once they have gathered all their facts, they have been asked to then write their information into a “Dear dairy” format. They will then be asked to read their “dear diary” as a narrative for their digital story.  I am hoping my example provides my students with a good representation of what is expected from them.

Readers, please let me know what else I should include in my example. Is my lesson appropriate for second graders? Is it too easy or is it challenging?

Thank you!