This past week, I presented at Research Day at the University of North Alabama. People that walked by enjoyed hearing about the ways that Kindergarten is enhancing their knowledge through iPads. They were amazed with the many examples of Doodlecast creations from our YouTube. If you would like to see some, please visit Kilby Kindergarten on YouTube. The YouTube shows examples of American Symbols, animals, and much more. As we are closing this year out, we will be making a final kindergarten creation to compare the beginning creations with what the children know how to do now. It has been neat to see the children utilize the iPads this semester in creating stories. They have expanded their use of words and knowledge of story telling. They have brainstormed and prewritten, drawn and told stories of kinds. The children seem to love the different apps that have been highlighted this semester. This week, I saw several children playing on Toontastic and Doodlecast during free time! This next week, we will begin working on a final story to tell about our year in Kindergarten.
Kindergarten has been using the iPad to write words. There is a game called "Spell" that students use to spell out different words. Some parts make the children move the letters to the correct stop to form the words. Other words have the students find the letters on the keypad. The variety of ways provides different ways of recognizing letters and ways to spell the words. This game also uses incentives. If the children gets six words correctly, they get a prize. The prize, much like Teach Me, is an aquarium. The children love to feed the fish. Each time they have to find words, the students get quicker. They are creating words, and their vocabulary is expanding. The students are also tracing letters on a different app. There are different ways to trace the letters. One is a train track, and another is growing grass. The children love the different ways. These apps are helping the children to expand their vocabulary and increase their understanding of forming and using letters in words.
Kindergarten has been very busy the past few weeks. After spring break, we began to apply what we know about zoo animals. The children made Doodlecast stories on zebras, giraffes, and lions as they learned about the different animals in class. We are so lucky to have the opportunity to have lions on our very own UNA campus, so many of the children have had personal, up-close experiences with Leo and Una, the UNA lions. All of the children's Doodlecast stories can be found on our YouTube page: kilbykindergarten. Mrs. Frederick's kindergarten class is now going back to our original apps to re-make stories that we started out with. It is awesome to see the changes the children have made in the past couple months. When we began with StoryKit, the children were not sure what to write about or what to include in their voice recordings. Now, we simply have to point the children into which app we would like them to use, and off they go! The children are writing away, and their creativity is never-ending. The children read and listened to Pete the Cat by Eric Litwin. The children then took the book and summarized it in a Doodlecast creation. They had so much fun singing along with the song. Their singing can also be seen on the YouTube site. We hope to begin moving the children into mathematics by transitioning our story telling into story problems. We will also use the iPads in the next couple of weeks for a weather unit done by Kilby Kindergarten's intern, Sarah Jones. It will be an exciting couple months as these children begin the end of Kindergarten!
| AuthorMy name is Kaitlin Ashley. I am a few hours away from being a senior at the University of North Alabama. This blog will be about researching the impacts of iPads in the kindergarten teaching and learning environment. It will follow this process from the very beginning, and it will keep everyone up-to-date on what is going on in Mrs. Frederick's Kindergarten class. ArchivesNovember 2012 Categories |
RSS Feed