Technology in Education: Notes from the Closet

This fall several of our teachers participated in The Global Read Aloud , working with classrooms across the United States to read the same books and share our thoughts and ideas about them.  One such partnership was with Ms. Cain, a librarian in North Dakota who is working with one of our kindergarten teachers, Ms. Thomsen .  Our collaboration takes places mainly through Seesaw where we share pictures and thoughts on the books we have read during this project. Ms. Cain suggested doing a BreakoutEDU activity that was created specifically around our Global Read Aloud author study. BreakoutEDU with kindergarten?!  I had only done this with adults (and Ms. Thomsen had never even heard about it)!  Luckily, I had recently purchased a kit which made this the perfect opportunity to dive right in with students. While the instructions for We Are Readers  were well done and thorough I still modified some to make the activity run smoother for our little learners. ...

Original Post (see my updated post here ) I’m always on the lookout for great sites to use with students, especially the little ones.  Our students have never had “formal” technology classes and the kindergarten students had never even entered the lab.  Finding sites that are age appropriate and educational can be challenging.  “ Teach Your Monster to Read ” is a site I stumbled upon one day here .  This site, based out of the U.K. teaches beginning readers about sound and letter matching as well as blending sounds together to form words.  It uses the context of monsters going on an adventure to different magical islands (eight islands in all).  On each island there are four mini lessons that works on accuracy and speed of letter recognition. Students must complete the game sequentially.  When logged off the next time they log back in the program remembers where they were previously so they don’t have to start over.  One of the best feat...