Teacher Planning Day - A Jumping Off Point for Summer Explorations

Thursday the four Kindergarten teachers, our Learning Specialist and I met all day to begin to focus our thinking about how iPads will be integrated in the classrooms this fall. Here is the agenda for the day:

Planning Day - iPads in Kindergarten

9:00

• Reflection on what's working so far
• Questions, issues, concerns
• Demonstrate updating apps on iMac
• Review Apps Review Framework, add more comments if available

10:00   Brainstorming:

• All the uses for iPads in the K day
• How to use them in small groups?
• How would they be used in a center?
• What additional equipment should we have?
•      headsets
•      stylus
•      keyboards (for teachers)

11:00

Plan a lesson using the iPad

1. Purpose 

     Why use the iPad

2. Intro

     "How to"

     iPad procedures

3. Student work

4. Follow up

12:00 break for lunch

1:00

Teacher iPads

Brainstorm uses:

•      note-taking on students
•      digital portfolio
•      Demonstration during conferences
•      Photo collections
•      Fuzzy clock - type uses
•      Drop Box
•      Evernote

2:00 

Envision the ideal app

     Begin to develop the requirements

     This summer, continue to write notes when you think of the perfect app.

3:00

Partner planning

The structure of this day worked very well. Inevitably, there were teachers who had not fully engaged with the iPad yet, and others who are already advanced users. We brought people along, shared our experiences, and I believe ended with everyone close to the same page!

Here is the result of the morning work, brainstorming classrooms uses:

6 iPads for Small group work or Centers

• number and letter warm up
• reinforcement for letter sounds
• phonics listening center - sounds reviews
• Listening center - stories
• Forms for listening responses
• Create a page for each child - to trace and practice
• independent math work - practicing concepts as review
• Dictating stories - story apps that involve telling or choosing from the list
• Writing stories - personal narratives related to photos from daily events or field trips
• App that allows kids to write by hand to tell the story, but also has a voice component and possible writing.
• Photo app for journaling based on photos.
• App that allows drawing and has lined page for writing
• Set up form with reading responses as another way for readers to respond to their reading.

Organization

Create a selected apps folders for either:

     Groups - by name of students

     topic - using familiar terms in your class

Students sharing iPads:

  Take a photo of the four children assigned to that iPad and set it as a background.

  Write the names of the students using a drawing program and set it as a background.

Charging:

    Use a plastic bin that can handle six iPads. Place them next to a power strip and charge    when needed. Lock in closet at all times.

In the afternoon we discussed how iPads could replace the perennial clipboard our teachers use for notetaking, and how they might serve to display student work in parent conferences. Here is the result of that brainstorming:

Teacher Productivity possibilities

• Evernote:
• photos of student work or student activities tagged, labeled, synced to our main computers or emailed.
• Record voices of students as they read or talk and tag and save. Keep a portfolio of reading all year.
• Create a Google doc - word or spreadsheet - for notekeeping - replace the old clipboard
• Popplet to collaborate with mind-mapping.
• Pen-based programs using stylus for handwritten notes - Penultimate, PhatPad
• Decided that we should get the full version of Popplet and Puppet Pal

The teachers will continue to blog and post reviews of apps on our framework (linked to the list of resources on this page) all summer. We meet again in August to finalize lesson plans and organizational issues in preparation for the start of school.