itunes in the Kindergarten Classroom

One of the best uses of technology in my Kindergarten classroom this year has been using itunes. Let me give you a little background first. My teaching partner and I have had many discussions about reteaching verses preteaching. Since I am in charge of planning the majority of our math lessons my focus became the amount of reteaching the district was expecting us to do with our new math curriculum. We went to meetings once a month all last year listening to other teacher's frustration with the amount of reteaching needed and the lack of time to do it. So we decided instead of always trying to play "catch up" what if we did a better job introducing skills and focused on preteaching skills/concepts in a way that the students would get some exposure to them before the actual lesson was taught. Which brings me to my itunes plan.

This summer I spent time loading all our CD's that we use for math. Mostly titles by Jack Hartmann or Dr. Jean. I looked at each chapter in the math curriculum and listed the songs that would teach the skills or concepts that the chapter covered. I then looked at what skills/concepts the students were struggling with or needed review on and chose a song to match that. Finally, and most importantly I looked at the skill or concept coming up in the next chapter and chose a song to match that skill/concept. Since our chapters usually go about 3 weeks I have an itunes math folder for each month. As we begin our math lesson time I play a "transition" song that is usually the review/reteaching song. Throughout the lesson, songs are used to teach the current skill/concept of the chapter. Last I play another "transition" song(s) to gather the children for the closure of the lesson. This song is the preteching song for the upcoming skill/concept.

Using my itunes in this way has increased my ability to pace and plan in a more organized manner. I have a better grasp on where students are earlier in the unit. I have much smaller reteaching groups. New lessons go smoothly, as all students have had opportunity to hear about the new material. Students are engaged and eager to participate in the lessons.

This system has really worked for me and feels like a good match for organizing itunes to compliment our math program. My colleague, Lynn has a completely different way of organizing her itunes that she uses for reading. And we both keep other folders which organize our "teaching" songs into different catergories. I would love to hear how others use itunes in the classroom!

New Year....New blog thoughts?

Wow, it has been forever since I thought about blogging. Unfortunately our technology group was required to make a commitment to other professional learning communities this fall so we have not been meeting as regularly as we were last year. We have tried to get together a couple of times this fall to share new ideas, problem solve our new printing technology problems, and to encourage each other to use technology in the classroom in new ways to enhance our teaching methods and hopefully make a difference in the learning process. I think most of the group continues to try to use technology and some are probably doing some "cool" things this year...so fellow Everett bloggers, I hope by getting back on my blog I will inspire you to do the same. Hope to hear from you.

Atomic Learning Assessment Part 2

I took the survey again and was pleasantly surprised at what I had improved in. This time I scored a 76 (my first score was a 62). The survey was easier to take this time and faster. As I read the categories I didn't really need to think long about them, I was able to instantly come up with how I was able to demonstrate a certain skill or recall how I had used a specific application in that area of the survey.
I am still weak in the numbers/charts/graph area. Which is not a surprise as it is not something we have needed to produce much of this year. Maybe as I set new formative goals and look at areas of assessment I will look for new ways to use technology and become more fluent in this area. I also continue to be weaker in the area of photos/video. More specifically the video stuff. Using comic life and being able to share my powerpoint knowledge helped me grow in the photo area and being able to teach others (tech team...thanks for letting me share) As for the video stuff, I will keep plugging along. I am working on my simple imovie with the comic life slides. Next I will tackle actual video clips for an imovie to demonstrate some area of math skills that we have struggled with this year. Hoping my six and ten year olds will help me with this summer project.
The atomic assessment has been a helpful, reflective tool. I am so thankful to be part of the tech-group and will continue to push myself to learn and grow in areas of technology.

Sharing Linkin Log Site with Parents

As part of my formative goal this year I wanted to share website knowledge with my parents. Although I believe I only have a small amount of parents using the internet, I hope a few might find some sites they can use. The following is the letter I will be sending to parents to encourage them to check out my "Linkin Log" collection. Next year I hope to send this at the beginning of the year and then possibly a monthly update on new sites. I also hope to complete my website so that these will all be linked through that as well.

Each year teachers are asked to set professional goals. This year one of my goals was to improve my knowledge of technology and how it can be used in the classroom. One of my projects was to set up my "linkin log" site. This is an online storage site which helps organize all my favorite websites. I would like you to visit my site and check out the parent and kid sections. Hopefully you will find some new sites for you and your child to enjoy. Please let me if this is something that was useful to you.

How to find my linkin log site
Go to the LPS website (www.lps.org)

Type "“links"” in the search box in the upper-left corner.

Select a category by scrolling down and choosing my site (Kim Zetterman: Mrs. Z'’s Links for Learning)

Technology Breakfast-April 17-Room 122...Bagels and Technology Reflections!

Hey Tech group, I have heard from some of you so lets go with a light breakfast on the planday. About 8-9:00ish usually works good. As I stated earlier I want to work on my imovie. Lynn said she would give a basic overview and share her movies she has developed for use in the classroom. And hopefully she can help any of us trouble-shoot if we spend some time working on them.

Since my tech survey showed that I am weak in the area of teaching others.......I probably need to step up and try to demonstrate my ability to help others become more comfortable with some area of technology. So if you are ready to take the leap to try something new, I can try to help. If you haven't done any comic life or powerpoints I am fairly competent in those areas and would love to help you get started. Also since Lynn set me up with instant messaging, I could attempt to walk you through that too.

I really am interested to see what everyone else is doing to use technology in the classroom or even if you are doing something new personally with technology I hope you will share. Personally for me, I just purchased a flash drive. It was kind of confusing to decide what kind to buy and how to get the most for my money. If you are looking into this, I would be glad to share what I did. For the classroom, I just used my home visit money to buy a digital camera and a video connector (the little dongle thing that makes your computer show on your T.V.). I would be happy to show you the sites I ordered them from and how I will utilize them in my classroom teaching.

See you on the 17th!

Do you YAHOO?

I feel so "techy" cool. Lynn taught me how to instant message with Yahoo messenger. It is lots of fun! Maybe an interest for the plan day?

Next Tech Challenge??

I have been pondering what to work on tech-wise on the April 17th Plan Day? Is anyone up for a breakfast gathering? I would love to hear and see what everyone has been doing with technology in their classroom these past six weeks. I need to change some of my powerpoint slides into comic life so that I can export them out as a quicktime movie in order to easily get them into an imovie.(Lynn taught me this) Then I need to get better at putting audio onto my imovie. If anyone else is interested in this? Also I want to think about what classes to take this summer (I haven't checked if the summer staff development is available) What else are we interested in exploring yet this year, I am up for one last challenge???!!!! Let me know your thoughts!

Current Event Homework

I have been tearing my hair out over the past couple of weeks trying to find appropriate and interesting articles in the newspaper with my fourth grader to use for his current event homework assignment.This quarter they can use online articles so I began searching for appropriate sites. The first one I found was a winner, so I thought I would pass it along. It can also be found in my linkin'log under kidsites. The site is Kid's News Room. It is set up to easily navigate with short, "kid friendly" news articles in a variety of categories. It also has a fun game section for when the homework is done!