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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2D Shapes Videos

This list of videos is my "go to" for songs and activities to help teach my kindergarten students about 2D shapes. I hope you find it helpful! If you're interested in learning about a wide variety of 2D shapes and activities we use in our kindergarten class, feel free to check out this blog post here.

2D Shapes I Know!

Harry Kindergarten

Secret Agent Shapes

Shape for Kids

Jack Hartmann

Shapes are Everywhere!

Jack Hartmann

Sing Along Shape Songs

The Shapes Song

Getting in Shape with the 2D Shapes

Shapes Song

The Shapes Song

KidsTV123

The Shapes Song 2

Kids TV 123

What Shape is it?

Colors and Shapes

Learn Shapes

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Four Frames Bulletin Board Set

I love creating bulletin boards that represent the learning of the children in my classroom.

Our old curriculum was very subject bound. At times we would have a writing, art, science or math focus on them.  I love the freedom of our new curriculum as it has changed to the Four Frames. There are so many cross-curricular links and I love being able to show that off.

One of my personal favourite ideas is to make a collage of current photos and collages we have made of the learning in our classroom. We have five different bulletin boards in my classroom so we use one board for each frame except we use two to separate demonstrating literacy and mathematical behaviours.

If you're interested in checking these out, click on the image below to pick it up from my store! There are five title pages and four pages with the corresponding expectations for each of the Four Frames. The titles are identical to what I have in the photos above but the expectations look better in the download.

I hope you enjoy it and find it useful for your classroom!

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Co-Created Class Schedule

Whenever possible, I am learning that my students like to use real photos of our day for our daily schedule. I like a consistent look and was looking for something that provided lines and boundaries for my kids to be able to add their own text in a differentiated way.

I looked around and couldn't find what I was looking for, so I ended up creating my own! If you want real life photos and children to print the environmental print in your classroom, this may be something you are interested in. It looks great printed in color and in black and white.

One thing that I love about this schedule is that all of the schedules are the same size (4.5" * 11"). I can print off different pages for different students based on their writing skill level and if they need to trace letters, I know that other students will be able to read their writing!

There are three different schedules that I included in one product to allow for differentiation! Tracing allows my youngest students, who often are non printers, to be able to participate in creating our schedule. The blank option allows for students to print all the words based on their own printing ability.

1. Insert photos & trace wording

2. Professionally print photos & trace wording

3. Insert photos and students individualize wording

If you're interested in checking this schedule out, click on this image to check it out!

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Learning With Learning Buddies

Having learning buddies is a great way to foster friendships between students in different grades in a school and helps encourage a community.

1. Read library books together

2. Read home reading books or levelled books together

3. Go on a letter hunt in the school for hidden letters.

4. Go on a letter hunt in and around the school for letters found naturally in buildings or in nature and take pictures of them.

5. Go on a environmental print hunt in and around the school.

6. Create a puppet play together. Older students can write the script and the younger kids can create the puppets.

7. Create art to display around the school for a school event.

8. Educate the school about the environment by creating posters together.

9. Write letters to each other.

10. Create a presentation for an upcoming school assembly.

11. Spend some time "getting to know" about each others grade. What do you learn? What do you like to do? What do you find challenging?

12. Write some poetry about an approaching holiday.

13. Create a Mother's Day or Father's Day card together.

14. Create your costumes together for an upcoming concert. Older students can help the younger students do tasks much quicker than it would occur independently.

15. Fill in an "All About Us" booklet where they spend time getting to know each other about their family. What they like to do. Special occasions that they love. What they cannot do yet... etc.

16. Older students can scribe letters for younger children for their pen pals! They also can read the letters to younger students, if it is difficult for some students to read.

17. Solve simple math problems together to learn new strategies.

18. Play math games to support fluency in math.


What are your favorite activities that you engage your students with during their learning buddy time?

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Beginning Our Growth Mindset Journey in Kindergarten

Half of teaching kindergarten children about growth mindset is teaching it in a child centred way. The other half is educating parents so they can support their students growth.

In our class, we actually don't use the term growth mindset very often but we are learning about it in our own, age appropriate way.

We began to talk to our students about mistakes. We've reiterated that mistakes help us learn and we all make mistakes. So we are all learning! One of our most popular sayings in our classroom is, "Mistakes makes our brains grow!" We use many different phrases that mean the same thing message.

Most recently, we have been using primary friendly posters to guide our thinking:

In our class we support students by using an interactive learning pit! 

To read more about it by clicking here.

We use the following quotes to inspire students

Mistakes are beautiful.

They are needed in order to learn. Everyone learns when they make mistakes

I cannot do this... yet!

We've talked about how our mindset influences our thoughts. We can learn. We might not understand something now, but we will understand it eventually!

Believe in yourself!

Knowing that we can learn gives us a positive attitude. We can learn lots of things!

Simple, and child friendly. 

I was happily surprised when a small group of 6 girls gave our SERT (Special Education Resource Teacher) a tour of the classroom today. She sat down to play with the children and they decided to show of some of their reading skills around the room. They began by reading the "write the room" words they had posted around the room (this is a very popular activity in our classroom - see the link for where I get these activities from). Then they walked up to our new growth mindset posters. They read it to our SERT and then had a nice conversation with her letting her know what that meant. 

"Mistakes are beautiful!"

"Everybody learns and everyone makes mistakes. Even our teachers!"

"My mom makes mistakes. She is learning too!"

"I am learning when I don't understand something!"

"I am learning when I make mistakes!"

These are just a small sampling of their understanding, but extremely meaningful nonetheless. A very noteworthy moment in my teaching career, for sure!

Slowly but surely, they are coming up to me and my teaching partner throughout the day and acknowledging their struggles. It is getting more frequent that we hear, "This is hard! That means I am learning!"

Here are some other posters we have recently added and discussed with our students:

If you are interested in the posters that we use in our class click on the link below! There are many included in the bundle and we use them as a reference regularly throughout our day.

How do you share with your students the concepts of growth mindset? I would love to hear from you!

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