My Prezi

As this is my last project, I wanted to say how much I enjoyed this project and this course. This project seemed easier than some of the other 40 pt. projects. Either that or I am just getting better at technology and the computer! I am very excited to use what I have learned in my own future classroom!

I chose to use the Utah Core Standard for Kindergarten: 
Standard I Objective I 
Describe and practice responsible behaviors for health and safety.

Here is the link to my prezi:

Being responsible for your own health and safety

Kindergarten Newsletter

I chose to focus my newsletter on our Social Studies unit. I am focusing on where the children fit in to their world. We are learning about maps and the globe, the city, state, country and world they live in. This is just a simple example of how the children can expand from their home to their family, then on to their city, state, and country. Below you will find the link to our newsletter for this unit of study.

Kindergarten Social Studies Newsletter

I found this to be an easier project since I have preciously used Lucidpress for another project but it was still pretty time consuming because I made it three pages and it was fun playing around with the different setup options.

Resources for Newsletter

• Standard 3 (Geography): Students will use geographic terms and tools.

• Wikipedia
• Alpineschooldistrict.org
• Youtube
• Google

Using Animoto to create my video of "The Five Senses"

I wanted to teach the Kindergarten Core Science standard "Describe parts of living things; Differentiate between 5 senses and related body parts. Gathering and arranging the pictures just right can be a tedious activity to make a good presentation, but it was enjoyable. Adding the music made it flow nicely.  I did learn quite a few ins and outs of the Animoto program which helped me get the video together. I would use this program again.

My colors animation

Colors Animation

For this project I chose to teach the colors with the

animation tool. This project took a long time to create but I really enjoyed it and hope to be able to make more for teaching in Kindergarten!

School Carnival Flier

Making fliers for school activities is always a fun adventure for me. I used Lucidpress and really liked all the options from the free account part of the website. The only trouble I experienced was figuring out how to link it to my blog.

 

http://pub.lucidpress.com/4581cdb2-944a-4135-b11f-5086db177d4e/

Science lesson: Living and Non-living things

http://www.easel.ly/browserEasel/3454489

Follow this link to go to the infographic I made for a Science lesson for Kindergarten. This was a difficult project for me because I had a hard time navigating the program I used to make it.

Teaching the parts of the plant

What a fun project to learn how to use Google slides and make a visual presentation for the students. I think a lot of children are visual learners in one way or another and any type of visual presentation will benefit their learning processes.

You can follow this link to see my presentation for teaching the parts of the plant which is part of the Utah Common Core for Kindergarten:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1bJD1-JtICMGiHv43ZnVNH9WUcd5hjAWYn5-QX4cHyZA/edit?usp=sharing

The Caldecott Medal timeline

As a teacher, reading in the classroom is very important! I had a lot of fun creating a Tiki-toki timeline of the Caldecott Medal, it's creator and medal winners. I have loved the Caldecott Medal books ever since taking a Children's Literature class last semester, so I found a lot of interest in creating this timeline with some of my favorite medal winners. Difficult at first, but it became easier as I got used to the different options to add things to the timeline. This project was a lot of fun!

Here's the link...Enjoy!

 http://www.tiki-toki.com/timeline/entry/605062/The-Caldecott-Award/

Getting to know you questionnaire

I think it is always important to know who your students are! This little survey can help a teacher to find out important things about each of their students as individuals. Even though we may try to teach them all in the same classroom setting, knowing the ins and outs of a child can help the teacher help the child learn in the best environment and in the best way. This activity was not too difficult. Coming up with the questions was probably the most difficult. I am glad that I can use this option in learning more about my students.

What will your child be learning in Kindergarten this year?

Here is the link to a brief summary

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EfFSp6LkG4x_aoypIH71_NnMNvPWV3LgwPhyV-uWV4Y/edit?usp=sharing

This google doc was difficult for me. I had a couple of ideas of how I wanted to do it but ended up completely changing what I was doing because it was getting too long. Therefore, I changed it up and decided to do bullet points to keep it simple and organized. I have never done a drawing or a link before in this particular setting, but it was a lot of fun learning and growing to see what I could do.

Youtube

I have used YouTube a lot over the years and I have found some really great videos to help me in teaching music to my kindergartners every week. There is such a great variety to choose from as well as a great variety of genres. Whenever I need a children's song, a classical song, or a nursery rhyme, I can most likely find it on YouTube. Another thing I have found with YouTube is that there is a great amount of really BAD videos for children's learning. When I say bad, I mean poorly made videos. Poor graphics, poor singing/voicing, or just plain BAD videos. It can take a lot of time to find really useful videos for using in the classroom, but I have found that it is worth my time when I find a great video that the children love! Embedding it in my blog was very user friendly and quite simple.

Using Pinterest in the Classroom

I have always loved Pinterest since I first found out about it. I didn't realize how user friendly it is and I also learned something new in creating a Pinterest widget for my blog. I think it is a really great tool and resource for using in any classroom. I like that people are willing to share their ideas because we all know that if something isn't working in the classroom, that you should change it up and do something different and new. There are so many different ways to teach a specific concept and I really like being able to access Pinterest!

Using Google Apps

My level of experience with Google Apps is minimal at best. I have used Google Docs and Blogger the most and have really felt the benefit of these apps.  I'm pretty comfortable at learning new things and hope that I can learn many new computers techniques through my Computer Technology in Education class.

I feel that the best Google Apps to use for an Elementary school teacher would be, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Youtube, Gmail, Contacts, and Photos. All of these apps can be used for communication and for teaching. Also, with photos you can document what is happening in your class and share it with parents on the class blog.

Computer Technology in Education

I am now currently taking a computer technology class and setting up this blog to go along with that.