Leveraging Seesaw for Problem Solving

“Problem solving is for students to dig deeper into their thinking about math. They take the problem and break it down. The most important piece of problem solving is getting the students to talk about it using mathematical vocabulary and getting them to explain and justify how they worked the problem and how they arrived at the answer. Sometimes there is no defined right or wrong answer. It is more for them to explain to me how they got their answer.” -Mrs. Mancino.

At Haslet Elementary, Mrs. Mancino’s 2nd grade classroom uses Seesaw to leverage their problem solving in Math. It is truly unbelievable how quickly her students have picked up use of the Chromebook in the classroom. She did not return to the classroom from maternity leave until the second week of October. Before her return, the students did not do many activities on the Chromebook and did not use Seesaw at all. They started problem solving on Seesaw the last week of October. They now use Seesaw daily and have started learning to use Google Classroom, Google Sites, Google Slides, and Adobe Spark.

In their math journal, students explain step by step what they did to solve the problem. They write out the equation and the solution, take a picture of their work on Seesaw,  then use the record button to explain their thinking.

An example of a multi-step addition and subtraction problem. The students have to start by breaking the problem down into 4 squares (I know, I need to know, equation, and solution). They know Ava and Shelby say 42 geese. They also know when they got to the top of the hill they saw 25 more geese. Lastly, they know 15 flew away. The students then have to figure out what question they are trying to answer. They need to know how many geese were left after 15 flew away. 

Seesaw activities are another way they problem solve. The question is asking the students to find the quadrilateral with all sides a different length. Mrs. Mancino teaches her  students to connect the dots using different colors so they are better able to see how many sides each shape has well as how long each side is. By using different colors for each answer, it helps them learn to do this for similar questions later on. They used different colored pens to draw the shapes, then they had to record their justification of why they chose the answer they did.

The power of problem solving and having an authentic audience can change the way your kids look at their work! Seesaw has allowed these students to work hard, share their accomplishments with their peers and family members. Talk about motivation!

Building Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking One Block at a Time

Third grade educator Cathy Baker partnered with Cox Elementary Librarian Jamie Jensen to design a video game that determines Harriet Tubman's greatest achievement. Before students were able to create the video game Cathy designed a variety of inquiry based learning experiences in the classroom about Harriet Tubman to ensure students understood the content first. Jamie then offered Bloxels as a way for students to demonstrate their understanding of Harriet Tubman. This tool allowed the students to plan and design visuals that would come to life in the form of a video game re-enactment of important events in Harriet Tubman's life.

Before jumping right in with technology students planned a storyboard on paper with their group that focused on the character, the time period, and the trials of this historical figure. Then, students had to determine each group member's role by deciding which group member specialized in creating the character, background, and additional props and animations. All students had an active role in participating with this project but the most successful groups had high-functioning teams who were able to work together and think critically to create their finished product. Finally, one team was selected as an Expo 2019 submission and then also selected by the campus for their learning experience to be showcased at Expo 2019. The girls presented the project to families and guests who played their game and discovered firsthand how their learning guided their creation.

Clara Love Elementary GATES educatory, Kristy Schluter decided Bloxels was the perfect platform for her second grade story writing project. Students took the time to create and plan their characters, setting, and plot for their story before they turned it into a video game. Next, Kristy reached out to her campus Instructional Technologist, Jillian Phillips, to learn more about Bloxels. Jillian had seen the experience the student at Cox Elementary designed and she put Kristy in contact with the Cox Elementary gurus!! She set up a time for Clara Love’s second grade students to Zoom with Cox Elementary’s third grade experts. The third graders were able their peers in 2nd grade how to use Bloxels. Jillian also set up a Flipgrid where our Clara Love and Cox Elementary students could ask and answer questions virtually throughout the unit.

Kristy’s second grade GATES students loved every second of the design process involved with Bloxes and believed this was a wonderful learning experience!  Designing video games through Bloxesl is fun for the students and relatively easy for them to use. Students were 100% engaged and learned a lot by trial and error. Bloxels has endless options for creating intricate rooms and pathways for students who want to go above and beyond. Mrs. Schluter believes these types of learning experiences are important because they provide opportunities for students to be in control of creating the content and sharing it with an authentic audience. Students loved having so much creative freedom and the ability to see their ideas come to life in their very own video games. Both of these projects integrated elements of coding, ELA, math, and STEM into a totally student-centered PBL that combines imagination, creativity, critical thinking, technology, and problem-solving skills as they design a video game.

Warning... #Slackers Ahead

Sometimes the words "Professional Development" can make you cringe -- especially when you mix those words with summer!  However, those were not the sentiments of the dual-language team in Northwest ISD.  This summer they decided to take on the challenge of meeting the needs of #EveryChildEveryDay by becoming #Slackers.  No, they did not wait until the last minute to start preparing for the upcoming school year.  Rather, they dove into intellectually collaborative conversations using a tool called Slack to discuss their practice of educating bilingual students, which worked to strengthen their professional learning community (PLC) across the district.

Slack is a collaborative messaging service that allows teams to meet virtually and gives teams the ability to share a variety of digital products in one online space. Teams can organize their discussions into both channels and threads to maintain productive conversations on a plethora of topics.

It all started when Señora Katia Ramón Pino had the idea to connect the dual-language teachers all across NISD. Understanding the importance of learning from one another through sharing personal experiences and the power to learn from literature, she began looking for the best avenue to virtually connect educators. While collaborating, initially she thought a Twitter chat would work best, but she wanted the conversation to feel more like a live discussion with the ability to share out any medium to express their thoughts. Eventually, she landed on Slack as the ideal platform to meet their needs because discussion questions could be posed and message threads could carry the conversations to deeper levels. Additionally, the ability to create new channels to focus learning was a priceless feature as this method of meeting is planned to continue throughout the entire school year.

Our district's frame of thinking is meeting the needs of #EveryChildEveryDay. This group of educators exemplifies this mantra as they are discussing with one another best practices to try with their students. At times, being a dual-language teacher can feel isolating as you are the only member of your grade-level team that does what you do. However, with the use of Slack to build and strengthen this PLC, the teachers are able to communicate and collaborate with one another to make every child successful. Slack helped meet the purpose of this PLC because teachers across the district feel empowered by their colleagues to continue being lifelong learners, both from one another and literature, to gain the knowledge of how to help their students grow.

There is definitely no room on this team for a slacker as everyone contributes their expertise and strengths. With all the prework these #Slackers did over the summer building the toolkits of one another, the possibilities are endless when it comes to trying new strategies with their students to help them be successful in their learning environment.

Fluttering Through The Butterfly Unit With Digital Notebooks

The spring semester life cycle units create a lot of excitement for elementary campuses in Northwest ISD.  Kindergarten anxiously awaits the arrival of ladybugs, first grade live streams chicks hatching and growing, and second grade celebrates the life cycle and release of butterflies.   Instructional technologist Kelli Sanders and Britt Horn saw these exciting units as a great time to partner with Kelly Suarez, Elementary Science Coordinator. Together these three instructional leaders worked collaboratively to design interactive digital notebooks for kindergarten, first, and second grade life cycle units.  These interactive digital notebooks created many opportunities for our youngest learners to use their digital skills to think critically and communicate the information they have learned throughout the unit.

Kristen Daugherty, 2nd grade educator from Hatfield Elementary is one of many educators from our district who was excited to provide her students with the opportunity to showcase their learning through the digital journal.  Throughout this journal students were recording their observational changes over time, predicting and recording data trends on a picture graph, and using the language of the discipline to explain and justify important vocabulary.  At the completion of this project, students shared what they have learned to a district-wide Flipgrid board as well as had the opportunity to listen to other students sharing about what they have learned during the unit. 

Mrs. Daugherty loved that her students were challenged to dig deep into rigorous thinking while staying engaged in the interactive elements of the digital journal. Mrs. Daugherty also loved the ease of having a district vetted pre-created resource she could easily integrate into her classroom with confidence.

All Things Seesaw

Mrs. Anderson’s 2nd grade class are Seesaw natives. They use Seesaw for many reasons throughout their day. Whether they are creating their own problems and solving each others work, presenting to their peers and family, doing teacher created activities, celebration their hard work, or communicating with their parents, it is all done within the Seesaw platform. If you ask them they tell you what they like about using Seesaw, here is what they say. “You are able to show your work to your parents even if they are not there to see it. Just press the record button to record your work! It is easy to record your work progress.”

Here is Mrs. Anderson telling us the 5 ways her class uses Seesaw the most:
Student created problems: I love to use Seesaw for students to create a problems, post, and have parents and students solve their work. This is great for formative assessments and really fun for the students. You can see that the parent viewed it, liked it, and even solved it! Students can leave audio comments or type a comment to their peers.

Presentations: Using Seesaw for presentations is great for you and parents! I love it because it gives the students opportunity to start their presentation over, they love helping each other on recording, and the parents can see their presentation. It is also saves classroom presentation time!

Teacher created activities: We LOVE doing Seesaw activities in my classroom! Sometimes, the students ask for me to create an activity. I can do it quickly and in the moment, I just use pic collage to create it on my phone and then post it. You can create things for them to read, label, draw on, etc.!

Celebrations: We also have a celebrations folder where we post fun pictures and events! The kids love celebrating themselves and seeing their peers hard work as well.

Parent communication: Parents and I love the announcement feature on Seesaw! It is so quick and easy from my phone, you can see which parents view it, and it goes right to their phone on the app with a notification! You can also separately message each parent privately! My parents love this features for quick reminders about their child, ride changes, etc. It is easy for them to go right to the app!

Walking in Mrs. Anderson’s class you can tell that her kids are familiar with this process and love all of the ways Seesaw has transformed their learning.

Riddle Me This

Second Graders at Clara Love Elementary are pros at justifying the number riddles that they wrote. The students in Mrs. Melbourn's class have been working on ways to represent numbers.  They have spent time working on whole number representation and relationships such as: odd, even, place value, comparing, and ordering.

To demonstrate their understanding of a whole number's position, they created Number Puzzle Flip Books.  After creating their flip book, students took a picture of a blank hundreds chart and created a voice over in Seesaw as they justified their thinking about the position of their number within the hundreds chart.

After adding their videos to their Seesaw Class, they spent time creating QR codes for their video to be placed with the Flip Book. Linking their work to a QR code allowed students to share with their authentic reasoning with an audience.

Alex, a student in Mrs. Melbourn's Class, shared that having an opportunity to record his voice to explain his thinking helped him really think through exactly what he was telling his audience. He went on to say, "It helped me kinda count and cross them out and helped other people kinda to learn. Then they know that 50 is an even number, because its 25 and 25."

Google Drive Classroom

Students in Mrs. Gierisch's 2nd grade class at Wayne A. Cox Elementary have turned their classroom inside out.  They were given the opportunity to test out a class set of Chromebooks.  The students had never logged into Google, and their teacher had only used Google Drive a little bit.  After 3 weeks these kids were on fire.  They are now using Google Drive daily.
  At first, they just practiced their Google log in, then slowly they explored adding folders, Docs, Slides, and Draw.  Mrs. Gierisch also taught them the importance of their email.  Through a shared Google Doc they can access a link straight to their NISD email.  They have practiced checking it daily.  Students have always come into the room each day and completed morning work, only now their work might be sent through email or even posted in a shared folder from their teacher.

                      

Example of Morning Work

Students First Shot at Google Slides

                           

Over the last month, these students have learned so much! For example in Science, they learned about Kiddle.co and researched different stages of a butterfly lifecycle. Then worked in groups to collaborate and create this google slide to present their learning. Last week they were even confident enough in their latest learning of Google Slides to present at our district's Night of No Limits.  Google Drive has changed the way these students learn!

World of Research

Second grade students at Beck elementary recently explored the world! This cross curricular unit allowed students to learn about other cultures, as well as expository writing and communicating their ideas. Mrs. Moses and Mrs. Jeffcoat opened student's eyes to global communication by contacting families around the world and having them post videos about their Christmas traditions on a padlet wall. The project consisted of four parts: Learning about other cultures, writing an expository essay over research, creating a poster of facts to present to the class, and making a video using Shadow puppets to highlighted a chosen country. 

When asked what they learned about other cultures, Morgan commented, "I learned that in Italy they

eat eel for Christmas and they call cake figgy pudding, it looks really good!" Colbie and Reed added, "I wish that we opened Christmas crackers like they do in England."  

One of Mrs. Moses' students (Ben) lived in Italy for three years. Ben and his family made a video about Italian Christmas traditions and put it in the padlet wall to share with the class. They used Shadow Puppets for this video. Ben comments, "I choose Shadow Puppets because my sister used Shadow Puppets for a 5th grade report and I liked it."

While this project was fun, it was also challenging at times. "The hardest part was presenting the information and working with our table," said Sam. "We had to try to spell everything correct and everyone wanted to draw at one time without talking about their idea first," expressed Reed. They added, "We did rock paper scissors to decide who got to write first." Colbie and Morgan pointed out, "It was kind of hard working in a team. We were both managers for our team, so we had to give everyone something important to do." The essay was also challenging. Reed commented, "The first draft was challenging because we had to have a hook and write about all of the things that we learned."

All of the students enjoyed using Shadow Puppets to make their video. "I like picking out the photos for the shadow puppet video and working with the special effects," said Sam. "We used smiley faces, snowflakes, stars, and other emojis to make the video more fun for others."

Morgan and Colbie summed it up well, "We loved this project because we got to learn facts about what other cultures do." They both agreed that next year's class should do this project. "I think they’ll have fun," said Morgan. "They will have to learn to be friends with others. I think every class should do it."

Come check these projects out at Techno Expo 2016. You can also view these student's videos in the padlet, or by clicking on the links below:

Created with Padlet

Morgan's Video Exploring Italy

Colbie's Video Exploring England

Sam's Video - Exploring Mexico

Reed's Video - Exploring 

Ben's famliy video about Italian traditions 

Water Travels in a Circle... Yes, it Does!

Second graders at Peterson Elementary have taken their knowledge of the water cycle to a whole new level. A digital level! 

In Ms. Anderson's class students used a web based tool called ToonDoo to let their creative, artistic talents shine as they worked to create a comic strip that truly showcased and extended their understanding of the water cycle.

Their task was to use the five vocabulary words learned through their water cycle lessons: evaporation, condensation, precipitation, accumulation, and water vapor. Students had the use the vocabulary words correctly and search for images within ToonDoo that clearly depicted that vocabulary term. The students worked independently on laptops to type and create their comic strip. Choosing layouts, selecting images and formatting the text provided a variation among products and allowed students to make their comic strip look exactly as they wished. Creative choice was motivating to these students.

 "I liked how you could type in what you wanted to find and it would find what you needed." -Brenden

 "It was challenging to find the picture and typing everything up but it was fun." -Genesis 

 "I liked how you picked all the pictures that you wanted in your comic that the website had." -Isabella

Maren, a second grader in Mrs. Spratt's class, chose to share her knowledge of the water cycle in a different way. Prior to lessons taught on the subject, Maren asked if she could create a Kahoot for her classmates to use as a review. Mrs. Spratt provided Maren with key vocabulary terms and Maren did the rest. Independently, Maren researched the vocabulary terms and created her Kahoot. Students in her class were able to use her game as a fun review before their water cycle assessment.

 

"I wanted to create a Kahoot because I like to try new things. I already remembered a lot about the water cycle from first grade." 

-Maren

Click HERE to play Maren's Kahoot

Student projects highlighted in this post were also presented at this year's Techno Expo.

When PBL meets App Smashing Field Day Fun

When the second grade at Hatfield Elementary was asked by their PE teacher to plan and design a new field day game that incorporates force, motion and/or balance, students jumped at the chance to create a great solution to this Problem Based Learning (PBL) challenge. 

To build schema students worked in groups with hands-on activities to learn about balance, rolling, spinning, and sliding. They researched various field day games using books and iPads (internet).

After students had collected enough information and understood with mastery the concepts of force, motion and balanced, they worked together to design a new game using what they learned.

Throughout the project, to cement their learning and connect ideas, students used iPads to collect observations via several apps including the camera and other platforms. Once the teams completed their research, they used Educreations to draw out a blue print of their activity. Then they worked as a team to build a model using various materials in the classroom and donated by families. In order to collect all of the information and the process, students created a PicCollage of their learning activities. They also created a Tellagami to explain how their game would be played. 

Once all of the pieces were finished, the teams created a video using Videolicious, inserting all of their previous files and recording their voices to explain the project in order to present their ideas to the PE teacher and to the rest of the school. 

The final presentation not only showcased the solution students came to for the initial problem, but captured the learning and integration that happened throughout the entire learning event.

Here is one example of the many projects completed by Hatfield Elementary's second grade led by Nicole Wallis:

Click here to see the full video presentation.