Wakelet for Education

Wakelet is an awesome organizational tool for educators, but it also can be used with students. It is kind of a mix of Pinterest and Padlet. I have become obsessed with organizing my resources, links, and videos into collections. I can now find everything I need quickly. Do you find yourself having a million tabs open on your laptop? Well Wakelet is the solution. Have you ever felt that you just can't find a useful site that you were using recently,? Wakelet is the answer. Visit my Wakelet Page HERE.

Check out this quick overview of Wakelet.

Check out the resources below on how you can use Wakelet with your students.

Valentine's Day STEAM Activities

Here are some ideas for integrating STEAM with Valentine's Day!

1. Valentine's Day Scrabble Activity - Check out this printable from AndNextComesL. This activity works best with Scrabble Tiles, but as an alternative you could project the tiles for students so that they know how much each letter is worth.

2. Build the Tallest Tower - This can be done with conversation hearts, toothpicks and heart marshmallows, or red blocks. Get creative, have students measure their tower, record their result on their iPads. (Take pictures!)

3. Create Valentine's Day Boxes - Students can get creative with storage for their cards that they will receive on Valentine's Day. Give the structure parameters or certain lengths for their materials to mix in some math. Maybe add some engineering too by stating that there has to be a door on their box/envelope.

4. Create a Green Screen Message for Parents - See video below.

5. Valentine's Day Cupcake Graphing - This is a cute idea created by Life over C's. It includes a printable dice and graphing sheet. You have to put in your email address to get the materials for free or you can easily adjust this activity for graphing something else that is Valentine's Day related.

6. Code Your Name - Use binary code to either code your name as a heart or a bracelet. Idea by Little Bins for Little Hands.

Guided Reading iPad Choice Menu

I have been planning on creating a literacy iPad choice menu for teachers to use with their students during guided reading literacy flex for some time now. We all know how that goes... items get moved down the to do list just like this one did. Thank you Mrs. Richardson for reminding me of the need. I found a menu on-line that had a good base and then I adjusted it for the needs of our students and what we have as choices in Self Service for our school district. When you go to the doc, feel free to adjust it to your classroom needs by making a copy of the document to your Drive. My copy is not editable. You will notice that there are a few apps that are on the menu more than once. That is because those apps are apps that can serve many purposes. For example, Book Creator can be used by students to create, but there are also a variety of already created interactive digital workbooks for the students to download and use on their iPads like Sight Words, Vocabulary Journals, Hunks and Chunks, plus many more. To access these books, click here. Another versatile app is Seesaw. There are activities already created for students to practice word work or other skills along with recording students reading.

When you visit the iPad choice menu, scroll down to the second page for a Key to help you identify the apps from the first page of the menu. Also use this menu as a source of ideas of what I can model for you and your students or what can be a point of discussion when we meet during a PLC or another time throughout the school day.

I also created a log in flyer for Lalilo. Thank you Mrs. Harnik for the idea. I marked over the actual school codes in the screen shot with red so that if you are reading this and not from MSAD6 you can get an idea of what the log-in flyer looks like. If you are an MSAD6 employee you can click this link to access the flyer and print some for your class.

I suggest that after students scan the QR code they should click the share button, up arrow inside a square, to create a fast link to the Lalio site. It will look just like an app on the iPad once added.