It’s Thursday, but here’s a recap of what we have done this week.
Fifth graders have been using Tinkercad to design snowflakes. I have been slowly printing them on our 3D Printer (Makerbot Replicator+). I am laying out about 6 snowflakes at a time and drawing a “map” of where each student’s design is, then letting them print. I have been starting the printer around 7AM and they finish around 1pm. It is about an hour for each snowflake and I have about 100 fifth grade students… you can see where this is going. It will take me a while to get them all done, but since it is October and we are working on snowflakes… well, maybe I’ll have them done by Christmas.
First, third, and fourth graders have been working on Codespark. They have the iPad app and they have been loving using the site. I will get my other grades using this site as well. For the sake of my brain, I have to break it up during the day and I can’t have all of my classes on the exact same thing. Signing in 6 classes worth of kids to an app and getting them started… well, that’s too much for one day. My third graders in particular have been great fans of it. My classes have done code.org before, but apparently Codespark is “way better” and it is even better than Tynker, which was their favorite coding app last year. I ended up pulling the plug on them using Tynker as they often found themselves on the community section of the app, not on the educational side of things. If technology ever gets itself straight, I am going to have Tynker removed from all of their devices.
Second grade has been my class that has been working the hardest. Using this freebie from Star Kids on Teachers Pay Teachers, students are using the Classkick app on their iPads to complete the assignment. We are using our Worldbook Kids encyclopedia subscription to read (or listen to; excellent differentiation here!) articles about their nocturnal animal. That is where they get the information for their sheet from. After completing the sheet, they write out what they will say in their green screen video. They are also doing this in Classkick with Logitech Crayons on their iPads. After they have their notes ready, they find a picture of their animal for their background. For more about how we do this, I wrote a tutorial and posted it here.
For kindergarten, we have rotated between stations and some reading. My goal for them next week is a story and an activity that relates to it. I’m thinking we’ll use Creepy Pair of Underwear. I have seen some cute activities that go with that book.