Ms. Snyder's 1st Grade

  Reflection Part 1 Reflection Part 2 A) I learned more about actually using media tools in any classroom. Other classes have felt more like the tools were meant for teachers alone, but this course helped connect the tools into the classroom as well. My course goal was to find tools that I can use with my students. This can be tough with my students being 1st graders. A lot of technology is meant for upper grades and it can be difficult to implement new tech tools with little ones. I think as an educator, the ISTE standards I have met through this class are the Learner, Citizen, Collaborator, and Designer. I have put effort into learning more about updating my use of tech in the classroom, further established my electronic citizenship skills, collaborated with other educators/gained information from others through media, and have designed tools to further enhance my students' learning in the classroom with media tools this coming school year.  B) I found the most useful tools ...

I immediately was impressed by the amount of tech resources that Richard Byrne shares on his blog, freetechforteachers.com. A resource that I found to be beneficial for students AND teachers is Readlee. I have not heard of this website before, but I am glad to have access to it now. Being a first grade teacher, a huge piece of assessing student reading skills is listening to them read to you. Readlee provides a place for teachers to assign reading passages to students, who then can log on and read aloud to their device, at home or school, and then AI detects the strengths and weaknesses of their reading. I am already thinking of ways to practice with this tool in my classroom this coming school year. Even if it is only used for practice!  I could create a blog post for students to access with an example video, showing how to log on and how to record themselves reading in their account and turn it in. Using step by step instructions that they can access at home with parents or at sc...

  (Click Image for Video) This video is an instructional video for parents and guardians of my students, that will help them learn how to prepare their child and set them up for success with NWEA testing in 1st grade. It shows how to access practice tools and what to do at home the day before a test. Student success depends on everyone, parents and teachers!

(Click Image to View) I chose to use my Mac screen recording app to complete this quick review for my 1st grade students who need to use Seesaw. I found this app easy to use and simple to upload to any platform. I also think that my students will enjoy having easy access to a video of instructions when they forget how to access their work on Seesaw in the beginning months of the school year.  https://youtu.be/T8y0I0vF42s  

(Click the presentation photo to get started)      To create this mini introduction to nouns for my 1st grade class, I chose to use the program Canva. I found it to have quite a few different options of the type of content I was able to create and I was able to customize my creation to meet the needs of my prospective viewers. I will be using this tool in my classroom as a whole group mini lesson on nouns. I will lead the students through each slide, pose the questions asked throughout the presentation, and it allows students to interact with myself and others as we dive into nouns together.      I found Canva to be simple to use and I think my students will enjoy the way the information was able to be presented. The only problem I ran into was slight complications when uploading certain photos, but with some trial and error, the problems were resolved quickly. The other perk is that my students will not need an account for themselves, as we will complete t...