Ang and I disappeared for a while. Even after 13 years, the beginning of the year just wears me out! I have no idea how my favorite teacher bloggers keep up with everything.
In happy news, Ang welcomed her second daughter, Harper, yesterday. I can't wait to get my hands on her! So, needless to say, Ang is going to be too busy to blog for a few months.
We really created this blog to help out our fellow teachers. What would help you in implementing more technology in your classroom? Let us know and I'll work on blogging about it!
One of my new favorite projects this year is my students' scrapbook. We're using Book Creator (a super easy app that does exactly what its name says) and each student is responsible for creating and updating their own books. I started the year by taking a "1st Day of Second Grade" photo of each student. I airdropped them (do you airdrop? It makes life so much easier!) to the kids and they uploaded their own photos into their books. They then wrote about their first day. We're working on taking photos of work we're proud of, taking photos on field trips so we can write about them, and just using our cameras to capture moments in our day. The kids seem to really enjoy creating their books and are way more engagd in writing and keyboarding. I'm working on not being so controlling and letting them make mistakes :) One of my favorite teacher tricks is to tell kids I've never used the app and to go discover for 10 minutes and report back what they've learned. They always, ALWAYS end up learning way more than I could ever teach them - and they usually find things I didn't know were there. Saves me from doing all the talking and they feel much more empowered.
Other ways we use Book Creator:
Elf on the Shelf antics - Ang and I each have an Elf who make their debut on the first day in December. The kids snap a photo of the Elf and write about what the elf was doing when they found it. They title their own book and have a blast discovering the Elf each day.
Publishing their writing - We use Being a Writer for our writing curriculum and there's not a lot of opportunities for kids to publish their work. It's so easy for them to snap a photo of their illustration and type in the text. The autocorrect helps keep me from having to help them fix up their spelling.
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving weekend!
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