This past school year, the new buzz word in my district was "SAMR." (Okay, maybe it's not a buzz word per se, but it's a buzz acronym at least.) SAMR is a model to help educators integrate technology into the teaching and learning that takes place in their classrooms. It stands for four different levels of technology use: Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, and Redefinition. These levels are then split into two separate groups: Enhancement and Transformation. Here's an image to explain everything.
Are you confused, yet?
Luckily for you, I used my handy dandy Screencastify and Prezi skills to create a video to explain SAMR to you in a way than doesn't leave you confused and frustrated like this graphic does! Yeah!
I hate being expected to use buzz words like SAMR without knowing how they specifically apply to me and my students. To help give you a more grounded understanding of the model, I give tons of examples in my video on how you can apply SAMR to your own elementary teaching practice. The video is targeted for use at my school (L'Etoile du Nord French Immersion, aka LNFI), but of course, you don't have to be part of my school to benefit from the video. The examples I give work for any students, but especially so for those in Grades K-1 and in language rich settings.
Enjoy!
Now, as a K teacher, I understand that we all learn differently and a screencast may not appeal to your personal learning modes and styles. Below you can find a the link to my Prezi presentation (for those of you who would like to peruse the information and click between slides at your own pace) and a link to my presentation notes (for those of you who learn best by reading and marking up text documents).
At the end of my presentation and in my presentation notes, I provided a link to a SAMR Wheel image that I find really useful. It combines the SAMR model with the Bloom's Taxonomy model that we all know and love. To top it off, it also includes images of various apps that can apply to each level of technology and learning. It is great! The image is pretty dense with information, so take a look at it when you have the chance. I stuck the image below, but here is the link to an interactive SAMR Wheel image with clickable links for all the apps:Interactive SAMR Wheel.
Well, I hope you learned something about SAMR today! Stayed tuned for next week, when I will show you how to make a nifty screencast video like the one you saw today!
I love teaching at an immersion school. Teaching a young child a second language is a very gratifying experience with quick and audible results. What I don't like about teaching at an immersion school is the lack of resources. French books are extremely expensive and hard to find. Same goes for French children's music, films, and other media. But fear not, future language teachers, for there is still hope: YouTube!
YouTube is an extremely helpful resource for language teachers and learners! On YouTube, I have found tons of resources to use in my classroom: French songs, French TV shows, French movies, French vocabulary practice videos, French book read-alongs... French everything! And all for free! Obviously, there are more educational YouTube videos out there in English, so you have to do a little digging to find the good French ones--but they are certainly out there if you go searching!
My Kindergarteners LOVE watching my collection of YouTube videos. I use them to provide movement in between lessons. I use them to enrich Literacy time with stories and poems that we would otherwise not hear. I use them to expose students to different Francophone cultures, vocabularies and accents. And of course, in true Kindergarten Teacher fashion, I use them to motivate students to behave. (For example, I tell the kids that if we clean up quickly and quietly, perhaps we will have enough time to watch a video at the end of the day!) Little do my students know that their "reward" videos are in fact teaching them something and exposing them to more French. I am a genius!
Now, for those of you who would like to start incorporating YouTube resources into your own elementary classrooms (foreign language learning or not), here are some tips and tricks that I have discovered that may be of use to you:
Make yourself a teacher YouTube account. It's easy! All you have to do is go onto YouTube and sign in using a Google account. (It is a smart idea to use a teacher Google account rather than your personal Google account.) Once you are signed into YouTube, you will automatically have a YouTube Channel tied to your account. On your YouTube channel, you can create playlists to keep your collection of videos organized. You can create playlists for weekly themes, units of study, subject areas, learning targets, etc. Here is a glimpse of what my YouTube Channel looks like!
Once you have created some playlists, make sure to update them periodically throughout the year. New and useful YouTube videos are being posted all the time! On the other hand, YouTube video are also being deleted all the time and you can lose some good content from your playlists without knowing/replacing it. Plus, I found that once one of my YouTube videos is deleted, then I get an ugly "Deleted Video" image in my playlist queue until I remove it. Yuck.
You can even create and upload your own YouTube resource videos and put them onto your YouTube channel for easy student and parent access. For language teachers, personalized videos can be very useful to help students and parents with homework instructions, vocabulary pronunciation, etc. Here is a sight word video that I made for my students to help introduce the "word of the week" in school and to then reinforce it at home. (More on how to make videos like this in next week's blog post two weeks!)
When logged onto your teacher YouTube account, make sure to avoid searching for personal videos that you may want to watch at home on your own. Your searches will affect what videos YouTube advertises to you on your homepage, sidebars, etc. After playing the alphabet song in class, you do not want a Jimmy Fallon video popping up in front of your students. Learn from my mistakes!
YouTube will often play an un-skippable advertisement before allowing you to watch a selected video. This is very problematic in the classroom. It wastes instructional time, it excites and distracts students, and it can possibly expose students to inappropriate ads. To avoid this problem, use Google Chrome to watch YouTube and make sure to download the "Ad Blocker Plus" extension from the Chrome Web Store. This will block commercial ads from playing before you watch a YouTube video. It works like a charm!
In my district, using YouTube while on the Wifi network is restricted (something to do with bandwidth issues). I have learned that if I plug my computer directly into the internet port in the wall using an ethernet cable, then YouTube is allowed. If you are having trouble displaying YouTube video at your school, perhaps this solution could work for you too.
For my fellow Frenchies out there, here are some great elementary-appropriate French YouTube channels that I have found over the past year. These resources are full of great videos that you can use with young French Immersion students:
Monde des petits.Fr: TONS of animated stories and songs in French. Unfortunately, the high-pitched singing voices can sometimes be annoying.
Les P'tits z'Amis : More animated videos and songs. A good resource for animated fairy tales and also some good songs about health and safety.
Mini ABC : Short interactive videos, lessons, and games about literacy, math, science, and more. Videos are from a Canadian children's TV show called Mini TFO.
Mini Doremi : Traditional and original songs and nursery rhymes aimed at the very young. Another Mini TFO resource.
Mini Mation : Animated TV shows such as Caillou and Barbapapa. Fun and educational because they are all in French! Youpi!
Monde Des Petits (a different one) : More animated TV shows in nice and simple French, including T'choupi, L'Ane Trotro, Petit Ours, and my personal favorite Peppa Pig.
French From Beginners to Advanced : Grammatical and vocabulary videos mostly for older students. Some of the phonetic videos could be useful for students learning to read and sound out syllables.
Mme Faltesek's YouTube Channel : Feel free to peek at my collection and see what I have came up with or copied from others!
I hope this blog post was useful to you! YouTube may not be the newest flashy app available, but it is a tried and true resource that is chock-full of information for the classroom. With a little effort, you can find tons of language learning videos that could benefit your students' learning. Give it a try and see what you find!
I wanted to do my first post about something that I am really excited to try out next year when my Kindergarten students get 1:1 iPads. It is an app called "Seesaw" and it is a super easy way for students to share their work and "show what they know" in an online learning journal using different tools and learning modes. I learned about it from another teacher in my school district who uses it in her 1:1 first-grade classroom. Fellow teachers are always the best source of information!
Seesaw is extremely easy for students to use, even Kindergarteners. First, to enter their class account on Seesaw, students use their iPad to simply scan a QR code. (No passwords required. Nice and easy for the little ones!) Then, students have six options to document their learning: take a photo, capture a video, do a drawing, choose a photo from the camera roll, write a note, or add a link. Students can further document their learning by adding a caption, recording their voice, and/or drawing on top of their creation. Lastly, students simply click their name in the class roster and click submit!
Teachers can view students' submissions on a running class feed, that lists the students' names and dates next to each item. Teachers can also choose to view students' work in a calendar view or in individual folders where each student's work is assembled. Teachers can even create project folders to organize work. A bonus feature for teachers: student submissions must be approved by the teacher before they are publicly added to the class feed for other students to see. No scandalous or inappropriate posts allowed!
This app may seem simple, but that is the beauty of it! In my Kindergarten classroom, students need simplicity. Too many choices for students leads to indecision and wasted time. Seesaw will provide my students with a quick and straightforward way to capture their learning. The big buttons and clear icons will make it easy for Kindergarteners to navigate the app even if they cannot read. I have so many ideas of how I want to use this app in my class -- I cannot wait until next year! Students can take pictures of the results of a Math game, practice their French using the voice recording tool, label pictures during Science, or record a video of their friend presenting a Writing piece. Seesaw will transcend subject areas, learning styles, and ability levels! Here is a science video that my class created together using only 1 iPad... imagine what they can do next year when we have 1:1 technology!
Oh! And I forgot to tell you the best part! Seesaw has created a "Seesaw Parent" app where parents can sign up to view their own child's work. Seesaw sends parents real-time notifications as students post work, increasing communication and giving parents a glimpse of what their child is learning at school right that moment. The Seesaw Parent app bridges the school-home divide by inviting parents to engage in their child's learning and encouraging them to further learning and discussions at home. And unlike a classroom Facebook page where the teacher is snapping all the pictures and doing all the work, the kids do all their own posts and communication! Yahoo!
If you want to see the app in action, here is a video featured on the Seesaw website that gives a great brief overview of the app's capabilities in the elementary classroom.
All the information from this blog post was derived either from me playing around with my Seesaw app or from the Seesaw website. Visit their website at http://web.seesaw.me/ to learn more!
