Look in the sky...it's a storybird

Tonight in class we were introduced to a new storytelling tool, Storybird. This website encourages storytelling by providing illustrations for adults and students alike to use to develop ideas to write a story. Liz, Amanda and I collaborated to explore this website and created a story inspired by the If you give a mouse a cookie series, called "If you give Hedgie an Apple." Check out our first try...



We spent some time looking through pictures to try and find inspiration for our story. We discovered that you have to use pictures all by the same illustrator throughout your story. We had a tricky time trying to figure out how to add and save pages and got a little frustrated with trying to place the images on a page. Once we figured it out and got our story going, we wrote it pretty quickly. I don't think the website is user friendly enough to use with my students, but I can see using it to inspire my students writing. I could begin a story, then ask students to add a page or write the ending in their writer's notebooks. 

Picnic in the park

This Tuesday, my class went on a picnic in the park. We can see a large park form out playground and all year the kids have asked if we can go over there. So we decided that we'd make an afternoon of it and have an adventure. During centers in the morning we made sandwiches and packed a lunch, then we walked over, went on a scavenger hunt, ate lunch and explored a new playground. Upon returning to school we wrote about our experience. Such a fun was to spend the afternoon!  And a great way to practice my new animoto skills! The kids will love to watch and remember our day :) Check out our adventure...

Attempting Animoto

In my grad class I was introduced to Animoto, a way to make a video slideshow from your pictures. You can register for free and attention teachers: you can register for a free educators account that allows you to make longer videos!

 I experimented with creating a video tonight, and was able to make one using pictures of my bunny , Bailey. So far it seems pretty user-friendly. I uploaded pictured from my computer, dragged them into the order I wanted, chose a layout and music. I plan on using animoto in the near future to make some videos for my students, both pictures of some memories form the year as well as some letter or sight word practice.
Here is my first attempt:

Sign language and literacy

Recently I was asked to present at a professional development about my use of sign language in the classroom. I have noticed great progress in learning letters and sight words with the addition of sign language to my literacy instruction. A variety of research shows that preschool aged students benefit from sign language; from gains in receptive vocabulary, to the relationship between print and meaning to acting as a "picture" of a word for visual learners. Sign language allows students to see, hear and feel the words. the incorporation of multiple senses allows students more opportunities to process the information.

I have noticed in my sight word testing, that children recognize the sign before they recognize the word. A majority of my students will sign before saying the word, showing that sign aides in recall. As the year goes on and I notice more progress with my students I learn more ways to incorporate sign language in my teaching. Recently we had a health and safety themed unit, so I took the opportunity to learn the signs for some fruits and vegetables. I found this helpful with reinforcing initial sounds because many signs for fruit use the first letter of the word; "apple" is the sigh for "a" next to your mouth, "orange" is the sign for the letter "o" under your mouth, "banana" is using one hand to pretend peel the sign for the letter "b."

Pictured is my word wall, which has the letter, a picture that starts with the letter sound, the sign for the letter, and students names and sight words that begin with the letter.