Your Story is Unwritten

I had an opportunity to teach summer school in June and part of July. My position wasn't the "academic" kind . . . I was a technology rotation - students also attended art and movement.  These allowed teachers a 30 minute conference time. Now, let me tell ya! 30 minutes goes by quickly!
I loved the challenge of finding fun things for kinder through ninth graders to do.

Our theme for summer school was . . .

My main goal was to have students tell their story through sites that allowed them to create, not just consume!

Here are some of the sites/apps we used . . . some new . . . some not so new, but definitely fun!

Tagxedo
I love this site!  Most were familiar with Wordle, not many students had used Tagxedo for creating word clouds!

After reading, The Crayon Box that Talked, we talked about what made us each unique, things we love and things we like to do. (This is my all time favorite book for the beginning of the school year! See this post for first week of school books.)

I took the opportunity to teach students the shortcuts . . .  Command C and Command V.
I created a step-by-step guide for using Tagxedo. With the final product, some teachers made copies and posted the word clouds outside their classroom while others made a class book. The class book was adorable!

Another book was The Dot! (Great for International Dot Day - Sept. 15, 2014!)  
Augmented Reality!
You need the ColAR Mix app for this activity. Using the ColAR mix coloring pages, students colored their dot with things they like to do and for my kinders . . . their favorite colors! It was so fun to watch the little people look under the iPad for the actual floating spheres! Even better was the confused look when the spheres weren't there!

Build Your Wild Self
The kids had a great time with this site. This is perfect for when you get to animal adaptations and habitats or for creating a character for a story!

After I would read a book, I'd do quick share of the site for the day . . . then say . . . 

"Now tell me your story!"

Stay tuned for more!