Are You Considering SeeSaw for Documentation?

Are you considering SeeSaw for documentation in your classroom? 

I there are many great options about it as well as a few items to think about! I recently decided to use the program SeeSaw in my classroom to help with documentation of the learning.

I LOVED parent communication with it as you can send out notes and reminders through it. It is easy and efficient to use. My student’s parents absolutely loved looking up their student’s photos, work, and assessments which were shared with them. A few parents checked it regularly and raved about it. Other than that, to be honest, I didn't get any other feedback from the families in my classroom.

Assessment

There is a lot of AMAZING collaboration which can happen with this program! So many people have already created many assessment tools to share with others. These can easily be found in collaborative grade Facebook groups or with friends who you know who have created them. It helps teachers keep assessment simple and not having to worry about reinventing great assessments which have already been created.

Limited or slow internet?
Consider using a computer to search for assessment or add an assessment to SeeSaw. At first I was using my iPad but I eventually found that this was the most effective way to access all my stored information as my iPad ended up slowing down too much. With having two educators in the classroom I didn't always know what had been uploaded and the computer provided the fastest "check" for me to see so I wasn't making duplicates!

iPad problems

Our school had purchased a large allotment of iPads for teacher and student use which we have been very fortunate to be able to use. The unfortunate part of this is that in order to purchase many iPads, the purchasers sacrificed on storage space and our iPads came with the smallest amount of storage space available. Once our Board installed apps were added to them we had next to no storage space left! I found that SeeSaw is a memory hog as it is always trying to access what has been downloaded. As a result, the app crashed all the time

Not CASL approved
Our school board is very diligent in making sure that all our communication abides by the CASL designation and SeeSaw is not CASL approved.

Ultimately, this upcoming year I will not be using SeeSaw because of the CASL. This decision is totally out of my control. If I could, and I had access to better storage on an iPad I would LOVE to continue to use it!

What have your experiences been with SeeSaw? Please comment below to let me know!

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Outdoor Learning: Exploring Paint

Playing and exploring outdoors is one of my favorite ways to extend learning with my students.

We love to add color to our water bottles and spray them onto a variety of materials. We have brought out mural paper, chart paper and even white sheets like what is shown in the images above. All of these we attach to our fence and let the kids explore with their creations. 

Materials we used:

dead washable markers - creates vibrant colors which are washable

food dye - be careful as it can stain so only add a few drops

paint - add a couple drops of a water based paint to water and shake to mix the colors up!

Weather Caution:

Be sure to make sure that you do this on a hot day so that the paint dries quickly. We have had staff leave students art outside after we go inside and it has gotten ruined or blown away creating litter on the school yard. I firmly believe in modeling respect for the earth and teaching children at a young age to take care of it!

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Outdoor Learning: Dance Party Fun

One of my favorite activities to engage our students during our outside learning is to have a dance party. It doesn't matter what time of the year it is, the children all love to dance and have fun together!

I have found that some students simply like to join in by dancing on their own but most of our students enjoy exploring their creative expression using ribbons. They create their own routines together, often explore beat and rhythm or have fun exploring different ways that they can control the ribbons through various movements and the wind!

We pull out our stereo player and let the kids choose what music they want to listen to or sometimes we have a predetermined song list that we play from. In order to have the music have more of a stereo effect so that it will carry further, we put the music player inside a cheap styrofoam cooler from our local grocery store which we always keep in our outdoor storage shed throughout the year with the ribbons. Ribbons are stored in a bucket which is easily pulled out to set up for the activity. We always make sure at clean up time that all the ribbons face upwards so that they do not get knotted at the bottom of the pail.

When dancing with our ribbons we have 3 simple rules:
1. Make sure you don't hit a friend with the sticks (dowels).
2. Ribbons stay off of the ground (so we don't step on them).
3. We never play with them in the rain or in puddles as it makes the wood moldy and destroys the ribbon.

How to make the ribbon wands:

You will need:
1/2" diameter dowels
long ribbon strings - ensure there is no metal so that it won't rust.
dowel caps so the ribbons will not fall off

Instructions:
Cut the ribbon into long lengths all a variety of different sizes.
Tie them onto the end of the dowels as tight as you possibly can so that it shouldn't move around easily. I vary the lengths when I tie them so it is uneven.
Sometimes I'll mix up colors or I'll choose to stick with a color theme. Often times during our outdoor learning our students will change up which ones they use purely based upon the colors available!

How do you engage students in dancing activities during your outdoor learning time? I'd love to hear from you!

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