It's time for this week's Five For Friday. It was a busy week so let's get started!
1. I finally received my Dewey stand for my iPad, and was so excited to use it. With the free Board Cam app you can use the iPad as a portable projector (if you have Apple TV on your projector). The cool thing is I can take the stand around to student desks to show what they are working on, and it projects on my Interactive WhiteBoard. I can also use it with small groups at a kidney table.
2. Another cool technology related thing I tried this week was the free Readers Workshop app. This app is for recording student reading for running records/benchmarks. You can add notes, and give them a score for predicting, inferring, etc. It's really easy to use.
3. To encourage the use of descriptive adjectives while writing, I let my students choose a cuter than cute dog picture I had cut from a calendar. I usually look for calendars at the dollar store, or at end of season sales to use for this yearly activity. It is always a huge hit!
4. We are studying Japan in Social Studies as our town has a sister city in Kanonji, Japan. We were lucky enough to have lunch at a Japanese restaurant on Tuesday. We had the entire place to ourselves, and many parents were able to come along. I love the looks on the students' faces.
5. Along with the visit to the Japanese restaurant, my third graders spent an afternoon drawing characters and words in Japanese. I played Japanese music on the iPad while they worked - it was so quiet in the room, and a welcome relief from all the craziness lately.
BTW - we still have three weeks of school.
Hope you had a great week!
