I started using Seesaw in my classroom at the beginning of this school year. As an early childhood special education teacher, I wasn't entirely sure the best way for me to use it with my students.
At first I used it to show parents what their child was doing at school. I took pictures and captioned it with what they were doing. The parents loved being involved in class in this way. So many of them would love to volunteer in the classroom, but know that their child isn't ready for them to do that yet. More recently, I have branched out using the draw function in Seesaw to do letter traces and picture/recording activities where students get to pick their favorite (fill in the blank) and record over the picture to label it verbally. This week I tried something I saw online and it has worked really well. A talking alphabet! It has been a hit so far and I think is going to become a more regular activity for us. I'm so excited! This week we are talking about the letter "X." I cut out two strips of construction paper so students could use them to make the letter "X." I would have used my handwriting without tears materials, but I wanted some color to help make it more interesting. Once they had made an "X" with the construction paper strips, we opened ChatterPix and took a picture. The student drew a mouth and then we started to record. Some of my students were able to practice a couple of times with me and then record "I am a X. I make the sound /ks/ /ks/." Some of my students needed me to prompt them while we were recording. Others needed prompts more along the line of: Teacher: I am a Student: X Teacher: I say Student: /ks/ This can be adapted in so many ways! Once done recording, there are sticker options to decorate your picture. After the letter was decorated, I exported it to my camera roll and then uploaded it to the student's Seesaw folder so they can watch it at home and show their parents. Everyone LOVED creating their talking letter and playing it back. Click on the picture below to see the example I made for my students. Have fun making your alphabet talk!! :)
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Over the summer I got an email from my dad about this coding robot that had been developed for children ages 4-7 years old. It's called KIBO and it is made by KinderLab Robotics. It looked really cool and like something that would be a great adult led group activity for my preschoolers. So, I did some research.
Our school has 3 preschool classrooms. Two classrooms are similar to the Head Start program and one is an early childhood special education classroom. I came back to school in August and talked to my team and we decided that we wanted to try to get one or two of these KIBOs. With their blessing, I wrote a grant through our county and we were able to purchase one. Our PTA helped us buy another. So, now we have 2 KIBOs and are starting to brainstorm fun ways to introduce them to our preschoolers and use them in class. One of the things we are talking about this week is the letter D and when you talk about the letter D you need to talk about dinosaurs too :), right? I set up one of our KIBOs and put the stage attachment on it, then I taped a toy dinosaur on top and we got started! I explained to them that when we are telling KIBO what to do, we always need to start our block line with green for go and end our block line with red for stop. We took turns picking what we wanted KIBO to do and adding it to our block line. We scanned our block line with KIBO and then we watched our dinosaur dance! The kids LOVED it! We had fun taking turns pressing the button to make the dinosaur dance. |
My Teacher HatI am a teacher in a preschool special education classroom. My classroom serves students ages 2-5 years old. Archives
April 2020
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