![]() Learning about the Sustainable Development Goals has really opened my eyes to the possibilities of what I can teach my young students. Last year was the first year our International Baccalaureate school was opened, and I was struggling to connect early childhood education with global education. Now after discovering the resources associated with SDGs, I feel like next year I can truly begin to teach my students what it means to be global citizens. The resource I would use the most is the collection of lesson plans that are available through the TIGed portal. The lessons there are easy to use and are aligned with the SDGs. The lesson that I would use is the “Wonder Walk” lesson. It provides a great introduction to my Earth Day and recycling unit. The lesson aligns with a kindergarten standard of teaching about the five senses. In the lesson students are paired up and one student guides another student through a nature walk while the other student’s eyes stay closed. The leader will prompt the students to use different parts of their senses to interact with nature such as; having them smell a flower, or use their ears to hear a bird. The partners switch roles halfway through the lesson. Afterwards the teacher has a discussion with the students on what they experienced and why it is important to protect what they experienced. This provides the students with a real up close and personal experience on the importance of environmental protection.
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![]() I recently view an archived webinar from ISTE.org called "Top Tools for Global Collaboration". The goal of this webinar was to guide educators on doing global activities with their students as well as connecting with other classrooms throughout the world. Providing global activities teaches students empathy and understanding of cultures outside their own and how to become connected with their own community. On the webinar the presenters provided many different tools that teachers could use to help with global collaboration. Some tools they demonstrated were; Mystery Skype or Google Hangouts where classes got connected to each other randomly, Gridpals where classes can connect using FlipGrid, and Belouga where teachers can connect with classes around the world using text and video features. The tool that really excited me was Belouga. I am currently employed with Fremont International Academy and we are working towards becoming International Baccalaureate certified. Our goal is to guide students to become global citizens who positively impact the world. The thing that interests me the most about Belouga is that you can collaborate with other classrooms on content. Since I teach kindergarten I am always looking for educational technology that is easy to use and age appropriate. Belouga has lots of videos and images that makes it easy for early readers to engage with. Kahoot is a fun quiz tool that you can use for pre and formative assessments. You can create your own quizzes or you can use premade quizzes that other users have created. There are two ways for your students to play the quizzes; one by assigning the quiz and the students take the quiz on their own time. Or you can make a live game for students to do in real time.
The quizzes are presented in a multiple choice format and can be timed or untimed. Students earn points based on the number of questions answered correctly and there is a leaderboard that allows for friendly competition. On the teacher side you can see student results including which questions they got correct or incorrect. You can also see how long it took for a student to answer each question. Kahoot will also flag any questions that many students got incorrect. There are some limitations with Kahoot. The quizzes are only multiple choice and do not allow for open ended answering and the use of higher level thinking. Kahoot is fairly easy to use but could require some coaching for younger students and does not have an audio feature to read questions to ELL students or beginning readers. I think despite its limitations it can be a useful tool and time saver. ABCya! is a website with a collection of educational games for grades PreK-6. From the main page of the website you can select the grade level, and then are provided a list of games that are organized by subject and game type.
![]() I observed an archived webinar from the website ISTE.org, “Early Learning Network: Making Through Play”. This webinar addressed using makerspaces with early childhood. The presenter looked at makerspaces for younger children in more of a way than just using craft supplies and recycled materials. Since I have taught kindergarten for a long time, I’ve been looking for ways to turn my kindergarten into more of a 21st century classroom. The first part of the webinar focused on her room layout and how it’s design was very open and allowed for flexible seating. Students had many options in the room to create and explore. She had a building area, art area, robotics area, coding area, study area, and cozy corner. This part was helpful because it allowed me to think about how I layout my own classroom. While some of her places will not work with the amount of technology I have in my room, I can adapt her layout to what I do have available. The next part showed different ways to provide opportunities for students to create in the classroom. Many of them were ways I could use things I already have in my room. One part that really made me excited was the use of Seesaw. The presenter had some great ideas on how to utilize Seesaw for more than just as a reflection tool. Overall I felt this was a beneficial webinar that showed me ways to update my free choice centers and apply them to the ISTE standards for students. |
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Welcome to my Ed BlogThis blog will be used for me to post my thoughts on various hot topics throughout the education community. This blog will also be utilized as a way for me to track my journey through the Learning, Design, and Technology masters program. ArchivesCategories |