After posting about Bloom's Digital Taxonomy Verbs we received a number of emails from teachers inquiring about iPad apps aligned with this taxonomy. The Bloom's Digital Taxonomy Cheat sheet we posted awhile ago does feature a collection of educational apps for both iOS and Android (and the web), however, we went ahead and created this visual incorporating some of what we think are the best apps and tools aligned with each of the thinking levels of Bloom's digital taxonomy. Of course our selection is subjective and based entirely on our previous reviews of these apps and we are very much aware that there are several other great web tools and apps that can fit in this pyramid but due to practical limitations we only featured representative samples in each category.

The Padagogy Wheel is designed to help educators think – systematically, coherently, and with a view to long term, big-picture outcomes – about how they use mobile apps in their teaching. The Padagogy Wheel is all about mindsets; it’s a way of thinking about digital-age education that meshes together concerns about mobile app features, learning transformation, motivation, cognitive development and long-term learning objectives. The Padagogy Wheel, though, is not rocket science. It is an everyday device that can be readily used by everyday teachers; it can be applied to everything from curriculum planning and development, to writing learning objectives and designing centered activities. The idea is for the users to respond to the challenges that the Wheel presents for their teaching practices, and to ask themselves the tough questions about their choices and methods.

Here is a handy inforgaphic we designed specifically for teachers and students. The visual is based on a post we published here a few days ago featuring a total of 15 practical iPad tips to help you make the best of this device in education. Some of the features mentioned in the earlier post relate to Safari, we omitted those and kept only the ones that are strictly technical. If you want to download or print a PDF version of this infographic click here. Enjoy

My name is Erika and I blog over at the other lion about my son, Punkin, who has a genetic condition called Fragile X Syndrome. I have also...

A fantastic new iPad app was recently released. I am so pumped about this one! I am a huge fan of Eik Siang Mar’s website, FunAndLearnMusic.com. She has a huge variety of free music worksheets that are both visually attractive and educationally effective. I have some of my favorite worksheets downloaded on my iPad. I like… Continue reading App Review: SproutBeat for iPad

Great site to read over: http://langwitches.org/blog/category/ipad/ I particularly liked the emphasis on higher level use of iPads, etc. I agree that the iPad should be used as more than a fancy workbook.

This Bloom's Digital Taxonomy mashes digital tasks like podcasting, blogging, networking, and bookmarking with the stalwart learning tool.

Are you a REAL teacher? Are you sure? Check out this collection of 15 funny facts about REAL TEACHERS and see for yourself! This is a high quality print-friendly poster so that you can downl

Ok, just because I've been gone from 'blogging land' doesn't mean we haven't been working hard in 4B. I've definitely been documenting a lot of what we've been doing! To start, it was clear to me that our old way of peer conferencing just wasn't working. Kids seemed to be goofing around, not really helping each other, and it was a waste of everyone's time. It frustrated me when most of my one-on-one conference time was spent managing unruly PEER conferences. I knew something had to change. I decided to revamp our workshop so that our peer conferences would hold both the author and the peer more accountable AND work on our 6-traits language. I introduced our 'new' method for peer conferencing using this anchor chart to document our process. After students finish drafting, they are to grab a 6-traits peer conferencing sheet and assess themselves by circling all the descriptors for each trait that they feel match their own writing. Mind you, we did a lot of whole-class practice with scoring writing based on the 6-traits criteria so students would feel comfortable doing this process on their own (and being HONEST!). Through our mini-lessons we've learned that it's possible to have high scores in some traits but lower scores in others. That's how we grow! Here you see Devin circling where he thinks his writing falls on our 6-traits rubric. (Note: The link to the 6-traits peer conferencing sheet above will bring you to an even more updated version than the one shown in this blog posting! Just FYI!) Here's another student assessing her own writing after she's drafted. This student has finished assessing her writing using our rubric. She decides on a final number score and circles it to the left of the descriptors. Then it's time to meet with a peer. (We have a peer conference sign-up sheet in our room which helps students know which other students in the room are also ready to peer conference.) Here you see this author reading his story to his peer. After he's done reading, he will explain to his peer the scores he gave himself and why. It's important for the peer to listen carefully to the author because it will soon be her turn to assign a score to this author for each trait . On the lines on the rubric, she will write to explain the scores she gives him. The peer needs to follow the following sentence stems in his/her scoring response: * I give this a writer a ___ because... * This writer needs to work on ... This process requires peers to truly work together, hold each other accountable, and it gets the kids using our 6-traits language a lot more. The second sentence stem helps the writer establish a goal for what to work on when revising! To see more of this peer conferencing process, watch a clip of us practicing this stage! Our focus lately has been on the trait of organization. We've been looking thoroughly at different beginnings and endings of both student and published writing. Here is our anchor chart documenting what we noticed! In other Writer's Workshop news, these are a few additional anchor charts we have in our room to help keep our writing organized. This anchor chart reminds us of powerful words to use to spice up 'said'! In reading we have been working hard on purposeful talk.This is so very important to the social construction of knowledge in any classroom! It's essential to teach students purposeful talk behaviors before even considering literature discussion groups (LDGs). The majority of kids talk like...well, KIDS! So, if we expect kids to talk like mature young people about different texts they read, we need to explicitly teach them how! Talking about Text by Maria Nichols is a great place to start if you're interesting in learning more about purposeful talk behaviors. I taught each of the behaviors individually through two separate mini-lessons - one day to explain 'hearing all voices' in a concrete way (without text), and a second day to practice 'hearing all voices' using text. Then I taught 'saying something meaningful' in a concrete way without using text, and the next day we practiced 'saying something meaningful' using text , and so on. Eventually all of the purposeful talk behaviors kind of blended together and kids started to discover that we often need to use all of these things at the same time in order to truly talk purposefully about anything! We did a lot of practicing, and I've been taping students in this process. Here is a clip of students practicing their behaviors while they talk about their families. (We had read a few books about different kinds of families to foster a safe environment to celebrate the fact that we all have different kinds of families!) We also had students practice their purposeful talk behaviors while discussing their best or worst memory in school (which helped warm up their brains for a timed writing activity we did during writer's workshop). Here is a clip! As a class, we watched these video clips to analyze our body language and other purposeful talk behaviors. I think taping and analyzing is a very effective way for students to learn how they should look and sound in an LDG. 'Keeping the lines of thinking alive' is a tough concept for many youngsters. Sometimes what happens is that students take turns talking, but they don't really build on what the person before them said. In other words, they don't really DISCUSS, they just share and listen. We applauded the first group in this clip because they had good body language and were respectful as listeners, but we discovered their conversation needed to be more 'alive' by asking questions and making connections to each other's ideas and thoughts. Mrs. Pierce and I taped ourselves doing a weak LDG and a strong LDG. As we watched each example, we used dots and lines to 'map out' our conversations (see chart below). In the weak LDG, we discovered Mrs. Pierce and I shared a lot of individual thoughts. The thought started, and then it stopped. There was really no discussion about anything we said; and Mrs. Pierce wasn't even looking at me during part of our time together! How rude! ;) In the strong LDG example, we mapped out a lot of dots and lines that were connected because we took each other's ideas and built on them. We truly discussed the text to dig deeper. We introduced several conversational moves for students to use to help get their voice heard in a conversation. Students also have these conversational moves on a bookmark that they keep in their LDG books. After we learned the respectful ways to speak and act when discussing with others, it was time to teach our kids how to flag their thinking. This is a crucial step to holding a successful literature discussion group because it allows the kids to track their important thoughts while reading so they have ideas for discussion the next day. Here are the 'codes' we use to track our thinking on post-its. We encourage students to use one of our codes to categorize the kind of thought they have and then write a few words to trigger their thought. This helps them when they get into a discussion group; they'll actually have pinpointed ideas to discuss! Students kept a chart in their Thoughtful Logs with all of our codes on it for easy reference. Here's a clip of our students as they practice flagging their thinking for the first time. The next day, students put all their new learning to the test. We put them in small groups to discuss the text "Slower Than the Rest" which is a short realistic fiction story out of Cynthia Rylant's book Every Living Thing. On another day, we used a high-interest two-page non-fiction text about leeches to continue practicing flagging our thoughts. Here's a clip of our kids flagging their thinking just after we modeled it during our mini-lesson. Below are some pictures of the kids' flagged thoughts. In addition to purposeful talk, we've also been studying the historical fiction genre. We've read several mentor texts, including Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner and Dandelions by Eve Bunting. Our first round of literature discussion books are all within the historical fiction genre. Here are a few of our historical fiction LDGs hard at work: Dear Levi: Letters from the Overland Trail Scraps of Time: Abby Takes a Stand The River and the Trace (I think I put my finger over the microphone at minute 2:00!) Oftentimes, historical fiction books will have a flashback in them. One group's book, called A Scrap of Time: Abby Takes a Stand by Patricia McKissick, has a flashback that occurs towards the beginning of the story. I photocopied some of the pages to try to explain this technique during a whole class mini-lesson. In the first section of the book, three grandkids are spending time with their grandma in her attic. They find an old menu and ask their grandma why she saved it. Chapters 1 through 12 flash back to 1960, where 'grandma' is just 10-years-old, living in Nashville, Tennessee at the time of a lot of civil rights protests. The menu is from a restaurant where a lot of sit-ins took place. Through the flashback a reader learns all about life during the 1960s. In the final section of the book, a reader finds him/herself back in the present - in grandma's attic, where the three grandkids ask their grandma some questions about her life during the sixties. There was also another flashback in the story Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner. We also read The Wreck of the Zephyr by Chris VanAllsburg as an example of a flashback in a fantasy book! In other reading news, here is a picture of the anchor chart that stored all the non-fiction text features we've learned. In social studies, we've been studying the economy of the five U.S. regions. Students have been reading small sections of non-fiction leveled readers to summarize a product or industry that is important to each region's economy. Students are typing up their summaries and we're calling those summaries 'articles' as they each create a magazine of our economy. Through this project, students have learned to: * Summarize main ideas * Center and left-justify their cursor * Use the tab key to indent * Change font size, color, and style * Bold, underline, and italicize * Safe image searches * Copy and paste * Cite their picture resources Here is the inside of one student's magazine. Next week we will be using this site to create magazine covers! Lastly, we had a chance to meet with our second-grade buddies earlier this month. We split the buddies up into two groups and one group stayed with Mrs. Adams to play holiday bingo. The other group was with me in the computer lab. Buddies used this site to play a variety of math and English games. One of the most popular games to play was called 'Story Plant' where students could click on different leaves to create the beginning to a unique story. Depending on what leaves were clicked, you would get a different combination of characters, settings, problems, etc. The computer generates a beginning to a story that the kids can print off and finish during writer's workshop! Have a wonderful weekend!

Teach your students about responsible tablet and iPad usage with this bright and colourful poster set!The rules come as "I will" statements and cover handling as well as app usage. Have a question? Use the Product Q & A or email me at [email protected] Related Products HereComputer Ru...

Created on the iPad with Pages Self regulation skills has been a hot topic among the Kinderchat network on Twitter. I have learned so much from these connected educators as they discuss this topic. They have been sharing resources and ideas for supporting the development of these skills in young learners. These educators are aware of how complicated the concept of self regulation is and how important it is in a child’s development. Studies are finding strong connections between a child’s ability to self regulate and later academic success. Self regulation skills also play a critical role in a young learner’s social success. There are some children who need more support than others in developing and demonstrating self regulation skills. There is great variation in self regulation skills at the preschool level. Factors such as temperament, social history, social stressors, prematurity, and medications can affect a young learners ability to develop self regulation skills. Some children need specialized instruction especially in regulating activity level and emotions. The 5 point scale is a tool that is valuable in teaching self regulation skills. Kari Dunn Buron is the teacher who can be credited with the concept of using this simple, but effective tool. Her website explains the concept and provides several examples. I highly recommend her book, The Incredible 5 Point Scale. Think of the scale as a thermometer that provides a visual for levels of a behavior or feeling, applying a number and color to each level. The numbers and colors not only provide a visual but also a common language that can be used to discuss and guide the behavior. The scale can be used to teach skills such as the regulation of voice volume, activity level, and emotions, especially anger and excitement. The voice volume scale pictured above, can be used as a universal tool in a preschool classroom. Children who need specialized instruction might benefit from repeated practice moving from a 4 voice to a 2 voice. In our program, it is not unusual to see the special education assistants in a class wearing a small version of the chart on a lanyard. This mobile version can be used in the library or other places outside of the classroom. When using the scale for managing activity level, the specialized instruction might involve teaching the child how a 5 and 3 looks and feels. The next step in the instruction would be to identify calming strategies to assist in moving from a 5 to a 3. We typically use Boardmaker to create paper versions of the scale. The iPad along with apps such as Skitch and Doodle Buddy allow a teacher to take a picture of the paper copy and draw over the top of it. The student can circle the number he or she is at and identify where he or she needs to be. Teachers can store the scales on the iPad and have them readily available when needed. Another option is to create a template of the numbers and colors using the application, Pages, on a computer or on the iPad. The template below was created by inserting the square shape, filling it with a color and typing in the corresponding number. This template can be customized with pictures from the camera roll on the iPad. Once a photo is added, the mask option and resizing tool will help you get it to the correct size so that it can be aligned with the corresponding number. In this example, I used the same Boardmaker icons but you could pull real photos from your camera roll. When the scale is finished, a screenshot of the scale can be stored on the iPad and viewed when needed. I am on the lookout for apps that use the 5 point scale. I recently discovered the free app, the Autism 5 - Point Scale EP. This app has great potential but doesn't quite meet our program's needs. The app opens to a main screen with the numbers and colors, along with drawings of a face expressing varied emotions. When you select a number, it moves to a screen with that number and face. On the second screen, the app allows you to customize it with your own picture, text and even audio but when you go back to the main screen, the customization isn’t there. It also does not allow you to save scales for different purposes. I am interested in hearing if others are using the 5 point scale or other visuals for teaching self regulation. Matt Gomez wrote a post about using the app, Too Loud, to help regulate voice volume. What visuals have you created? Are you using any technology to support the use of these visuals? Please share your thoughts and experiences.

A few years ago, our school implemented "voice levels" as a way to help at assemblies, in hallways, and within our classrooms. This has really helped with consistency across the grade levels and made the first few weeks of school even easier when introducing these concepts. In our school, if a teacher needs to get students' attention, he/she will hold up our hand in the shape of a zero. If kids are working in small groups and are getting a little noisy, I would hold up two fingers to remind them it was "Voice Level 2". When we create presentation rubrics, we always include "Voice Level 3" as an area to focus on. In the beginning of the year, when we are making our Daily 5 Anchor Charts around expectations, Voice Levels 0, 1, and 2 always make an appearance. I have loved thinking of Voice Level 1 (whisper) as "Spy Talk"! In the past, I have used the fingers-on-the-voicebox trick~ if it vibrates, it's not Voice Level 1~ but the idea of talking like a spy is soooooo much more fun! This year, I ask my Teacher's Assistant to help be my Voice Level Monitor. If they feel it is getting too noisy, they will assist me in showing the appropriate voice level with our finger(s). Here is the file for the poster (I recently changed over my font, so it looks slightly different). **UPDATE: If you like this idea, you will love my new Voice Levels Management Pack available on TpT! Be sure to download the Preview to see everything that's included and read my updated post HERE for more info! Enjoy!

What Language Should You Build Your App With?

Even though I wrote this post several years ago, we still use Popplet during reading to organize our thoughts as we read. We have also branched out and used Popplets in math, writing, and more! Popplet has continued to support teachers with more features such as class accounts and by sharing lesson ideas on their blog! If you are just getting started with Popplet read on to learn how to integrate the free iPad app Popplet into the classroom to teach reading strategies. What is Popplet? Popplet has become one of our go-to graphic organizer apps during Reading Workshop to teach

A description of what ages children should be able to master different speech sounds as they grow and develop in their speech & communication.

Our eight year old daughter just finished reading a story to me, and unlike our eldest child who polished off The Hobbit in second grade, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy in third, this sweet blessing is slowly plodding through her basic readers. I mean, can you blame her when there are EIGHT different […]

Ok, just because I've been gone from 'blogging land' doesn't mean we haven't been working hard in 4B. I've definitely been documenting a lot of what we've been doing! To start, it was clear to me that our old way of peer conferencing just wasn't working. Kids seemed to be goofing around, not really helping each other, and it was a waste of everyone's time. It frustrated me when most of my one-on-one conference time was spent managing unruly PEER conferences. I knew something had to change. I decided to revamp our workshop so that our peer conferences would hold both the author and the peer more accountable AND work on our 6-traits language. I introduced our 'new' method for peer conferencing using this anchor chart to document our process. After students finish drafting, they are to grab a 6-traits peer conferencing sheet and assess themselves by circling all the descriptors for each trait that they feel match their own writing. Mind you, we did a lot of whole-class practice with scoring writing based on the 6-traits criteria so students would feel comfortable doing this process on their own (and being HONEST!). Through our mini-lessons we've learned that it's possible to have high scores in some traits but lower scores in others. That's how we grow! Here you see Devin circling where he thinks his writing falls on our 6-traits rubric. (Note: The link to the 6-traits peer conferencing sheet above will bring you to an even more updated version than the one shown in this blog posting! Just FYI!) Here's another student assessing her own writing after she's drafted. This student has finished assessing her writing using our rubric. She decides on a final number score and circles it to the left of the descriptors. Then it's time to meet with a peer. (We have a peer conference sign-up sheet in our room which helps students know which other students in the room are also ready to peer conference.) Here you see this author reading his story to his peer. After he's done reading, he will explain to his peer the scores he gave himself and why. It's important for the peer to listen carefully to the author because it will soon be her turn to assign a score to this author for each trait . On the lines on the rubric, she will write to explain the scores she gives him. The peer needs to follow the following sentence stems in his/her scoring response: * I give this a writer a ___ because... * This writer needs to work on ... This process requires peers to truly work together, hold each other accountable, and it gets the kids using our 6-traits language a lot more. The second sentence stem helps the writer establish a goal for what to work on when revising! To see more of this peer conferencing process, watch a clip of us practicing this stage! Our focus lately has been on the trait of organization. We've been looking thoroughly at different beginnings and endings of both student and published writing. Here is our anchor chart documenting what we noticed! In other Writer's Workshop news, these are a few additional anchor charts we have in our room to help keep our writing organized. This anchor chart reminds us of powerful words to use to spice up 'said'! In reading we have been working hard on purposeful talk.This is so very important to the social construction of knowledge in any classroom! It's essential to teach students purposeful talk behaviors before even considering literature discussion groups (LDGs). The majority of kids talk like...well, KIDS! So, if we expect kids to talk like mature young people about different texts they read, we need to explicitly teach them how! Talking about Text by Maria Nichols is a great place to start if you're interesting in learning more about purposeful talk behaviors. I taught each of the behaviors individually through two separate mini-lessons - one day to explain 'hearing all voices' in a concrete way (without text), and a second day to practice 'hearing all voices' using text. Then I taught 'saying something meaningful' in a concrete way without using text, and the next day we practiced 'saying something meaningful' using text , and so on. Eventually all of the purposeful talk behaviors kind of blended together and kids started to discover that we often need to use all of these things at the same time in order to truly talk purposefully about anything! We did a lot of practicing, and I've been taping students in this process. Here is a clip of students practicing their behaviors while they talk about their families. (We had read a few books about different kinds of families to foster a safe environment to celebrate the fact that we all have different kinds of families!) We also had students practice their purposeful talk behaviors while discussing their best or worst memory in school (which helped warm up their brains for a timed writing activity we did during writer's workshop). Here is a clip! As a class, we watched these video clips to analyze our body language and other purposeful talk behaviors. I think taping and analyzing is a very effective way for students to learn how they should look and sound in an LDG. 'Keeping the lines of thinking alive' is a tough concept for many youngsters. Sometimes what happens is that students take turns talking, but they don't really build on what the person before them said. In other words, they don't really DISCUSS, they just share and listen. We applauded the first group in this clip because they had good body language and were respectful as listeners, but we discovered their conversation needed to be more 'alive' by asking questions and making connections to each other's ideas and thoughts. Mrs. Pierce and I taped ourselves doing a weak LDG and a strong LDG. As we watched each example, we used dots and lines to 'map out' our conversations (see chart below). In the weak LDG, we discovered Mrs. Pierce and I shared a lot of individual thoughts. The thought started, and then it stopped. There was really no discussion about anything we said; and Mrs. Pierce wasn't even looking at me during part of our time together! How rude! ;) In the strong LDG example, we mapped out a lot of dots and lines that were connected because we took each other's ideas and built on them. We truly discussed the text to dig deeper. We introduced several conversational moves for students to use to help get their voice heard in a conversation. Students also have these conversational moves on a bookmark that they keep in their LDG books. After we learned the respectful ways to speak and act when discussing with others, it was time to teach our kids how to flag their thinking. This is a crucial step to holding a successful literature discussion group because it allows the kids to track their important thoughts while reading so they have ideas for discussion the next day. Here are the 'codes' we use to track our thinking on post-its. We encourage students to use one of our codes to categorize the kind of thought they have and then write a few words to trigger their thought. This helps them when they get into a discussion group; they'll actually have pinpointed ideas to discuss! Students kept a chart in their Thoughtful Logs with all of our codes on it for easy reference. Here's a clip of our students as they practice flagging their thinking for the first time. The next day, students put all their new learning to the test. We put them in small groups to discuss the text "Slower Than the Rest" which is a short realistic fiction story out of Cynthia Rylant's book Every Living Thing. On another day, we used a high-interest two-page non-fiction text about leeches to continue practicing flagging our thoughts. Here's a clip of our kids flagging their thinking just after we modeled it during our mini-lesson. Below are some pictures of the kids' flagged thoughts. In addition to purposeful talk, we've also been studying the historical fiction genre. We've read several mentor texts, including Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner and Dandelions by Eve Bunting. Our first round of literature discussion books are all within the historical fiction genre. Here are a few of our historical fiction LDGs hard at work: Dear Levi: Letters from the Overland Trail Scraps of Time: Abby Takes a Stand The River and the Trace (I think I put my finger over the microphone at minute 2:00!) Oftentimes, historical fiction books will have a flashback in them. One group's book, called A Scrap of Time: Abby Takes a Stand by Patricia McKissick, has a flashback that occurs towards the beginning of the story. I photocopied some of the pages to try to explain this technique during a whole class mini-lesson. In the first section of the book, three grandkids are spending time with their grandma in her attic. They find an old menu and ask their grandma why she saved it. Chapters 1 through 12 flash back to 1960, where 'grandma' is just 10-years-old, living in Nashville, Tennessee at the time of a lot of civil rights protests. The menu is from a restaurant where a lot of sit-ins took place. Through the flashback a reader learns all about life during the 1960s. In the final section of the book, a reader finds him/herself back in the present - in grandma's attic, where the three grandkids ask their grandma some questions about her life during the sixties. There was also another flashback in the story Dakota Dugout by Ann Turner. We also read The Wreck of the Zephyr by Chris VanAllsburg as an example of a flashback in a fantasy book! In other reading news, here is a picture of the anchor chart that stored all the non-fiction text features we've learned. In social studies, we've been studying the economy of the five U.S. regions. Students have been reading small sections of non-fiction leveled readers to summarize a product or industry that is important to each region's economy. Students are typing up their summaries and we're calling those summaries 'articles' as they each create a magazine of our economy. Through this project, students have learned to: * Summarize main ideas * Center and left-justify their cursor * Use the tab key to indent * Change font size, color, and style * Bold, underline, and italicize * Safe image searches * Copy and paste * Cite their picture resources Here is the inside of one student's magazine. Next week we will be using this site to create magazine covers! Lastly, we had a chance to meet with our second-grade buddies earlier this month. We split the buddies up into two groups and one group stayed with Mrs. Adams to play holiday bingo. The other group was with me in the computer lab. Buddies used this site to play a variety of math and English games. One of the most popular games to play was called 'Story Plant' where students could click on different leaves to create the beginning to a unique story. Depending on what leaves were clicked, you would get a different combination of characters, settings, problems, etc. The computer generates a beginning to a story that the kids can print off and finish during writer's workshop! Have a wonderful weekend!

In his latest book, Brain Gain: Technology and the Quest for Digital Wisdom, Marc Prensky talks about using technology to enhance the brain's cognitive processes.