Book Creator and Seesaw

This year in kindergarten we used Book Creator to write books and stories.  By the end of the year my students became experts and decided to start typing their stories. Here a few of the stories written by my kinders and uploaded to Seesaw.                                   

Jayden wrote about his family's trip to Six Flags. His story is a great example of our work in the UOS and telling a story across pages. 

      

This student wrote about her family's trip to the pool and she wrote across pages with a different experience on each page. 

                                 

I love this student's complex sentences and transition words. He was the one who started the typing bug in our class. After he shared his book, all of his classmates wanted to give it a try.

App Smashing with Buncee and Seesaw and Freebie

Seesaw is the go-to app in my kindergarten classroom and we're always looking for new ways to use it. About four months ago I discovered a presentation tool called Buncee that you can use on the web or download as an app.  

Buncee functions somewhat like Powerpoint in the way that you can add slides- but a more kid- friendly version. They have numerous templates that can be easily adapted and uploaded to students' Seesaw journals. The images shown below are just a handful of the many educational templates available.

  You can also build your own slides using text, animation, videos, stickers, drawings, QR codes, etc. I absolutely love the multimedia choices that are available to add to presentations. 

Here is a acrostic poem template I created this year. It literally took 5 minutes to make! I simply uploaded it to their Seesaw journal and they used the draw feature to add words and illustrations.  

  

I also used Buncee to give my students and their parents ideas for their Flat Stanley project. I used one of their backgrounds, but then added my own text and pictures. 

                          

Since this was a slideshow I used the link option in Seesaw to upload it for my students. 

You will see this option in Seesaw, then it will prompt you to add the URL link.  In Buncee, after you finish your slide(s), you choose "Share" and then copy and paste the link provided.

I also used this appsmash in reading. For a simple assessment, I created this template and dropped it into their Seesaw journal.  After reading the book Flat Stanley students were prompted to draw their favorite part of the story.                                                                                                                                                                     

Math is another area where I used the Buncee/Seesaw combination. In the second half of the school year, we began tackling word problems. However, I soon noticed that some of my students still needed practice with smaller numbers, so I used Buncee to create differentiated word problems.  
Then I uploaded it to Seesaw and added my voice to give them directions. Like PowerPoint, you can duplicate slides in Buncee. So I created two slides to differentiate for my students. 

These are just a few ways that you can use Buncee in your classroom. I would love to hear how you are using Buncee and Seesaw with your students.  Check out the Buncee website to create your own account. If you don't have Seesaw, it is an absolute game changer.  Go to their website for more appsmash ideas and to sign up for FREE.

Flipped Learning in K!

After reading The Flipped Reading Block by Gina Pasisis this summer with my friends Maggie's Kindercorner and Mrs. Price's Kindergators we were were inspired to plan some lessons of our own. This is the first lesson I've created for my students, which addresses one of our GPS Science standards.  I created this slideshow in Shadow Puppet and then dropped it into each one of my students' journals.                           

I found this video on You Tube, which teaches the animal babies in such a fun, interactive way. She also labels both the mother and the baby as she sings the songs. My students really enjoyed this!

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I also attached a sheet for my students to complete after they watched the slideshow and the video. 

Counting books in the Seesaw App

One of the many reasons that I love the Seesaw app is that I can share items like this with parents.