Chatterpix: “Si j’avais 100 ans” As the 100th day of school approaches, take a photo of each child and age the photo using the App called AgingBooth. Your students will be excited to see themselves at the age of 100. In our Kindergarten class we spoke a bit about how we might look funny ahead of time and laughed together at our Teacher’s photo first. It was quite the lesson in learning to laugh at ourselves. We then took the picture to ChatterPix and used the mouth moving option to recite “Bonjour mes amis, j’ai cent ans, J’aime beaucoup ___, J’aime aussi _____.” They then memorized their lines (although many got nervous when recording so you’ hear me in the background.) The students and parents really enjoyed hearing their voices recite in French. Please see 3 examples by clicking on the links below: Quand J'ai C'est Ans 1.- Madeleine https://youtu.be/bcQtIS4waBU Quand J'ai C'est Ans 2.- Juliette https://youtu.be/8IMvNd01QCo Quand J'ai C'est Ans 3.- Kodah https://youtu.be/32VWi3o6IMo
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Our class has been reading along with audio books that I created using Book Creator for a few months. I finally felt the kids were ready to help create a class book using the App. Our class has been learning about families and discussing some of the ways our families are different and alike. We used clay to form a portrait of our families, based on Barbara Reid's illustration style. Then, we wrote a short description of our family using simple sentence starters in French such as : voici, c'est, and regarde.
Now, we were ready to start using the Book Creator App. I started off by letting the class have some time to play and explore the Book Creator App features. I encouraged students to share their knowledge and learn from each other. I have a few tech experts who helped their buddies discover how to insert a photo and record their voice. Next, I worked one-on-one with each child during our exploration time, and had them take a photo of their work and add it to the class book. Before this lesson, we have rehearsed reading their description of the family. I quickly practiced again with each child individually and then had them record themselves reading the text. Et voila! We had a class book created using Book Creator, which the class loves to listen to over and over. I also shared it with my parents on the Seasaw App and parents loved being able to hear their kids read the text. We had some very proud parents! Click the button below to see our finished product! Today we used the Draw and Tell app in class. With my grade 1 and 2's we have just started looking at masculine and feminine nouns and adjectives. Today, I used Draw and Tell to have them practice oral pronunciation of both masculine and feminine words, writing them in a sentence and drawing an image to go with it. This app is super user friendly for kids and its pretty self explanatory. Its a great way for the students to practice speaking french and encourages them to do so. I will be using this app again to create oral story's (perfect for first nations tie in), and simply practicing new french vocabulary. See below a few examples from today's session. For me, Book Creator is still one of the most useful and user-friendly Apps that were provided by SET-BC. The tool allows me to create books in French that are authentic and directly linked to what we are currently learning in the classroom. In Kindergarten, a big focus is on phonetics. I recently created a digital version of an alphabet book my class has been practising as a whole group. We read the book as if it were a song and the class repeats what I say. My kids immediately loved the interactive sing-song and are making stronger connections between letters and their sounds. Their learning is being extended by the use of the digital book, which allows them to practice the book on their own during centers, and also at home with their parents. It's been a fantastic way to reinforce our learning! I also created a book for practicing counting to 20 in French. Students and their parents have been very eager to practice reading the books together!
We have been working on Sur, sous, dans, devant etc. When we work on writing I typically tie it into some form of art project, as then the children are more engaged in the writing process. After reading a story about "un petit poisson" we created our own aquariums using old shoe boxes. The students had to work in groups of two and had to include things that where in the story that we had read.
We then made fish on Popsicle sticks to move around the aquarium and practiced moving them around and sharing with friends where the fish was located in the tank. Ex: "Mon petit poisson est sur la roche" Once students where comfortable with the oral part, we then practiced writing our sentences in our journal. We then looked at how to take pictures in book creator, how to add text and how to add audio. This was a quicker process than I had initially thought, and the kids caught on very quick. Together they wrote their stories, took pictures of their aquariums and then finally recorded their voices. This was a great activity to share with their parents on SeeSaw as well. It was a wonderful tool to use for assessment, but as well for promoting collaboration, cooperation and creativity. Being a Kindergarten class, this fall we have been working on one of our main goals of simply being more familiar with the ipads. Some students know what they're doing but they're many who have little to no screen time at home and are not familiar with ipads. We spent time talking about what the different buttons on the ipads do so they are able to change to volume and manage on their own. We talked about online safety and what to do if you end up somewhere you're not supposed to be. Although our ipads are set-up to lock the screen somehow students could run into a previously opened page and end up getting more into something while trying to exit. After this we tried to open a few applications on our own and practiced taking pictures of different shapes around our classroom. This was an interesting task as again, some were very familiar and some were very new to it. Students who were newer to ipads were paired with more familiar students so they were able to critiques each others photos and fiddle with what needed to change, e.g. - hold the photo still, stand back, etc. We are continuing to make books together and read many that the other teachers in the project have made which has been very helpful. We are also using them to work on our French letters the sounds that they make and literacy through different applications.
Over the next two weeks as we get back into the swing of things I plan on using the iPad as an assessment tool. We are looking at words such as: devant, derriere, sous, sur etc. We will be creating aquariums out of shoe boxes and little fish puppets to place within the aquarium. The idea is that the students will then take their puppets and place them in a spot "a cote de" and snap a picture of it with their iPads, they will then record their voices stating where their fish is located. We will also look at: Au debut, apres, et finalment which they will be encouraged to use as well. As the class is now pretty familiar with Book Creator we will probably be using this app.
We are also starting a coding unit, and tying it in with our the core competencies and science and tech. Eventually I would like to get them started using Scratch, but I am also curious to hear if anyone else has explored coding apps for kids? My class has been studying patterns this term. I realized that although my students could create patterns and identify them using linking cubes, they were struggling to identify them in real life examples. So, we went back and reviewed some examples and then met with our big buddies for more guidance. Together with our big buddies, we used the iPads to do a photo scavenger hunt. Students searched throughout the school for examples of patterns and took photos that were shared with the class afterward. Our big buddies taught the little ones how to take a photo using the iPad. I am so grateful that we have a big buddy class to support us in this way. Moving forward, I am excited to have my Kindergarteners take photos of their own work. I am currently using Seasaw to share photos with my class' parents. I am eager to have my students take more ownership in developing their digital portfolio.
We had our first introduction to the iPads in my Kindergarten classroom. I introduced my class to them last week as part of our morning literacy activities. Students were immediately intrigued and curious to explore the iPad center. I created two short digital books that reinforced familiar vocabulary we were studying that week. One book was about super hero adjectives, since we're currently doing a super hero unit that encourages learners to identify some of their classroom "superpowers." The second book was about halloween. Both texts were of high interest for the kids. Students worked in partners; they listened to the audio files on each page and then repeated the words out loud. They enjoyed reading along and because the text was directly linked to words we are learning, they were able to pick out several key words they recognized, even in their second language (French), which they have only been speaking for two months. I am so excited about being able to create weekly books that my students can listen to, and which can reinforce the words we're learning that week in an engaging and authentic way!! From what I observed last week, the kids are equally excited! At this point, our use of the iPads will be fairly teacher directed. I am with the small group as they play around and uncover how to swipe the pages and play the audio files. It will take us some time before students are ready to create or document work themselves using the iPads, but that is my goal for the third term. Until next time, Angela
We have recited our brand new iPad Air 2's from SetBC just over two weeks ago now. It has been a slow start as we are working on streamlining all of them before we start handing them out to the students. My class has been slowly learning what iPad expectations are and this week my students will be practicing how to properly handle and care for the iPad, what it looks like to work two to an iPad, and basic iPad navigation. In perpetration for all of this, myself and my two colleagues have been working hard to get to know the three apps given to us by SetBC. Pictello, Book Creator and Explain Everything where the three apps that came pre-installed into our iPad, I have to say I am so excited to get the ball rolling with these and my students.
I was overly excited when the iPad arrived and jumped right into using the apps with the whole class, that's to say I did the iPad handling and creating but they benefited from it. The first thing we did as a class was take one of their most recent writing projects and create a class book (see below) that I was able to publish using Book Creator and share with all of the students families. I also typed up all of the words they had written so they could listen to the class book being red to them. Another thing that I did right away was create a book of sounds, I recorded my voice saying different French sounds, and then wrought the sound on the following page. This way my students could listen to the sound, write it down and then self correct themselves when they had flipped the page. I shared this book on SeeSaw with my parents, encouraging them to work with their child at home using this book. Yesterday, all three of us attended a workshop on Apps for second languages. We got lots of resources to help our students and are excited to get our kids all ready to go with the iPads this week. |
AuthorThis site is maintained by 3 Early French Immersion teachers in Squamish, B.C. (Laura Hardjono, Amy Iredale and Angela Prescott) Archives
May 2018
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