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Help streamline your classroom with Apple's new virtual teaching assistant, Classroom. Our Tech Services department helps to configure it, you just download it and try it out! Send your students to a website in a flash, showcase a student's work or help them focus by locking their iPad down to one App. Check out the App Integration Snapshot below and give it a try!
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To complement Ms. Mill and Ms. McMillin's unit on on weather, they Skyped Ms. Mills' niece (who happens to be a second grader!) at St. Ambrose Elementary School in snowy Minnesota . Of course, on this January day, our students were dressed for 80 degree weather while their new friends in Minnesota showed off their daily wear of snow pants, boots, hats and gloves to simply go outside! Brrr! Students asked each other questions about the weather in each region and enjoyed a conversation that spanned over 1,000 miles. A great tip our second graders learned was if you wear a skirt to school in the snow, simply tuck it into your snow suit! And we thought snow suits were just for ski trips!
January's Life Skill is RESPECT. BPE 4th graders show us what respect is all about in this student-created video. Earn a Bobcat paw by showing respect this month!
Students in Ms. Bennett's 3rd grade class were interested in using stop-motion animation to create videos for science concepts. To become familiar with the stop-motion animation process and the app iMotion HD, they first created short animations using cars and backgrounds they created. Then, after they studied how rocks are weakened and broken down by weathering, they created an animation to deomonstrate their understanding of how erosion occurs and how sediments are picked up and moved or deposited to another place by water, wind or gravity. Way to go 3rd graders!
Ms. Rojas' 2nd graders sure have verve for verbs! Students in her class chose a verb to act out in front of the green screen and then found a background of their choice to add to their video. And what would a kid's video be without a blooper? Check out both videos above and you might be surprised at who you see dancing, running, jumping and rolling their way across the screen!
'Twas the day of recorder lessons and all through the school, not a paper was printing, cuz, that'd be uncool. Showbie was launched by the iPads with care, in hopes that their music lessons would be there. The students were all nestled criss-cross, while they all played their recorders "like a boss." While visions of Hot Cross Buns played in their heads, our music teachers' lessons were successfully spread! Ms. Jones and Ms. Hatch have caught the "Showbie bug" and now instead of handing out music in paper form just to get lost or crumpled in the bottom of a backpack, they deliver it via Showbie! But even better than that, students can press a button on the sheet music to hear their teachers play the song with the correct tone and tempo. But EVEN BETTER THAN THAT, students can record their songs and submit it to their teachers who can listen to it on their own time and provide feedback digitally. Students can even log in on their personal iPads at home or via a browser with their school Google account to submit and view their work from home. Honk! Honk!
The Hour of Code is upon us! Have a super hAPPy Friday with Apple's new WYSIWYG coding app Swift Playgrounds. Students join fun characters as they learn Apple's new programming language that compiles code right before your eyes! A great challenge for 4th grade and above! Thanks to Barton Creek's Ed Tech Ashley Pampe for this week's App Integration Snapshot.
Did you know that the Photos App now has markup tools? I didn't either until Ms. Ward stopped by to show me! She uses it with her second grade class to annotate photos. Check out the video above to learn how you can markup photos too! #teacherwin Did you know that the Notes App now has drawing tools that don't need iCloud accounts in order to activate the tools? Me neither, not until Ms. Tremel taught me how she uses this app and its tools as whiteboards for math with her first graders! Check out the video about to learn how you can use these new features too! #teacherwin Sketch like a boss with this awesomely free drawing app, Paper 53! Thanks to Debbie Smith, Ed Tech from Eanes Elementary for this week's hAPPy Friday App Snapshot. What will you draw next?
With a rainy day outside and a storyteller on stage, 3rd and 4th grade PE classes headed to the library for Yoga. Led by an engaging YouTube video from Cosmic Kids that sets Yoga poses to a retell of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, our students made fiery phoenix poses, stood as tall as the Hogwarts Castle, rode a broomstick and got sorted into different wizarding houses. Using Showbie, students submitted photos of their poses and comments to their PE teachers about how Yoga benefits them. Rainy day mischief managed!
Morning calendar in our kindergarten classrooms went digital long ago when we first got SMARTboards. Using Smart Notebook for the SMARTboard, one lucky student each day was in charge of writing the date, counting numbers, and checking and graphing the weather as the entire class followed along. After learning about Showbie, Ms. King decided it was time for an upgrade! Ms. King and our team of amazing kindergarten teachers now snap photos of their SMARTboard files and deliver them to the entire class to follow along with the lesson on their iPads! Now all students graph the weather, tally and count numbers in ten frames as well as marking calendar dates. What an awesome upgrade!
Our Literacy Library is a leveled library accessible to all teachers to support guided reading instruction within the classroom. We have sets of 6 of each title from reading levels A-Z, great for small-group instruction. Teachers are able to select from a multitude of genres that include, Graphic Novels, Narratives, Fables, Non-Fiction, Myths, Fantasy and more. All of our recently purchased books include high-interest topics with contemporary artwork. We use a free resource called Booksource Classroom Organizer to keep inventory and check books out to teachers. They even have an app that lets us add books by scanning barcodes! Our 5th graders help unpack, label, and reshelf books. A big thank you to our Booster Club for enhancing our literacy program at BPE.
Bridge Point 3rd grade students led this morning's assembly to honor and extended our thanks, gratitude and admiration for the men and women who have served our country. Our 3rd graders sang, Thank You, Soldiers, written and composed by Michael & Angela Souders, and there wasn't a dry eye in the crowd. After our assembly, veterans from our community joined 3rd grade classrooms to be honored and recognized for their service. May you have a safe and beautiful Veterans Day.
Our hAPPy Friday app sharing this week introduces Draw & Tell HD -- an app younger students can use for drawing and simplified animation. Whether exploring color and pattern combinations in the coloring-page section, drawing their own images, or creating mini-animations with movable "stickers" and voiceover, this app offers many open-ended exploration opportunities. For more info on how to integrate this app in your classroom, check out the app integration handout. Many thanks to VVE kindergarteners who shared some of their own creations as well as VVE Ed Tech, Holly Moore for this post.
Predicting what will happen in a book before you read it builds reading comprehension. These kindergarten students used sticky notes to jot down words or ideas that they predicted would appear in the book, At the Vet. We almost ran out of Post-Its they had so many predictions!
Using the Post It Plus app, I captured their sticky notes and Air-Dropped the file to each student's iPad. Students were then able to review, annotate, sort and check for their predictions as we read At the Vet. They then could group the digital stickies into predictions that were verified and ones that were not. Good readers also know that pictures and text connect. After a short discussion on the difference between text messages and text in a book *grin* we used the app Skitch to draw arrows connecting words and text to photos in the book. And that's what good readers do!
BPE 5th graders added a little bit of technology fun to their production of Alice in Wonderland this year using the Do Ink app, green screen technology and a beautiful hand-drawn background of a magical rabbit hole. What talented students we have here at Bridge Point!
This week's hAPPy Friday app is World's Worst Pet Vocabulary. World’s Worst Pet Vocabulary is an engaging way to build vocabulary for students in grades 3 and up. Students practice identifying synonyms, antonyms, prefixes and suffixes as they find a way to save their pet Snargg from peril to get him home safely. Take a look at the App Integration Snapshot for more information.
This month's Life Skill is Citizenship. Bridge Point 3rd graders generated a collaborative Answer Garden to brainstorm what it means to be a good community member and a good citizen. A few 3rd graders and Ms. Bennett then created this video using Green Screen technology to teach us all a little bit more about how to show citizenship. Earn a flag this month by showing good citizenship!
Thinking Blocks by Math Playground facilitates the step by step modeling of word problems. As students interact with each word problem they organize information and make model visualizations of the math problem. For ideas and resources for using this app, open the App Integration Snapshot below. Thanks to FTE's Jennifer Flood for this week's hAPPy Friday!
We are so fortunate to have such a dedicated, talented, and kind community that brings us ARTS DAYS at Bridge Point. This Friday, BPE students got to create, sing, drum, dance, draw, glue, construct, paint, bead, and learn about how art is a part of cultures around the world. Thank you BPE for the ARTS!
This week's hAPPy Friday comes from Debbie Smith at Eanes Elementary. You can have your students brainstorm ideas and concepts on Post-It notes and then use the Post It Plus app to capture the notes to a digital interactive version that can be shared. Check out the App Integration Snapshot below for more resources, ideas and learning fun!
The sound of over 700 voices of Bridge Point students filled the auditorium this morning with the beautiful song, We Are the World. As our students sang, their classroom teachers lined up to receive giant colorful balloons with messages attached to spread joy, love, kindness, peace, trust, and happiness. We want you to know that YOU ARE LOVED at Bridge Point! What a wonderful way to launch a celebration of the Arts!
This week our hAPPy Friday app spotlight shines on Stick Around -- an interactive puzzle app that allows kids to play, design, and share sorting/labeling puzzles. Check out the App Snapshot, as well as a helpful how-to infographic. Thanks to Ashley Pampe, Ed Tech at Barton Creek Elementary!
This week our hAPPy Friday app is Pic Collage Kids, a photo collage app. Check out the app integration sheet below for ideas on how to use Pic Kids with your students. Thanks to Holly Moore, Ed Tech at Valley View for this week's post!
Faster than a speeding bullet, she updated iPads in a single bound! More powerful than a locomotive, she copy and pasted Google logins and passwords using split-screen technology with the touch of a single finger! She entered Showbie class codes with her bare hands! She is a 5 year old iPad Superhero! Thanks so much to this amazing superkid in Ms. Skonieczny's kindergarten class for helping me update and set up Showbie on over 20 iPads!
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June 2018
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