Welcome to my blog! I'm Karen Belt, a Deputy Principal, working at Lynmore Primary School in Rotorua, New Zealand. In the past I have taught Years 0 - 4 and used 1:1 iPads to engage and motivate learners and improve student achievement. This blog documents my teaching and leadership journey and my learning processes with iPads in the classroom. I am a Google Certified Educator #SYD17 and I'm proud of having been a member of the inaugural Manaiakalani Digital Teaching Academy(MDTA) program and a Spark Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher (MIT) and an inaugural Manaiakalani Google Class OnAir teacher.

Thursday, 7 May 2015

Some new Explain Everything projects

I find myself continually looking to create different projects and ideas for my learners in order to keep them engaged with purposeful learning.  This term is no different and I'm trialling a number of new things to suit the needs of different learners.  Here is a small selection:

Pre-Writers:

A project for some learners who are struggling with fine motor skills and the formation of letters - allow learners to form lines and work on controlling the stylus (which is shaped very similar to a pencil).












Whole Class Inquiry Project:

A project for the whole class to document our inquiry journey this term.  I've combined a combination of activities over different pages and we work on 1 - 2 pages per week.  At the end of the term their completed project will be turned into a movie to document both their inquiry learning and their improvement in skills using Explain Everything and the iPad.













Beginning Writers:

A project for learners who are beginning to learn to write but need to practice their letter formation and letter size.  The learners use the lines as a guide and practice all letters.  This project also has them practicing their own name.


As documented during earlier blog posts, I'm finding continued success with using visual prompts to remind leaners which tool to use on each project page, and I've continued with this system this term.




2 comments :

  1. So many interesting things going on in your class.
    How do you scaffold 'comparing'?

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Juanita! I really love how my learners are so engaged and keen to see what Explain Everything project we will work on next :) To scaffold this particular "comparing" task I modelled the taking of the photos and then all the learners took their own photos before we regrouped on a mat to discuss "compare" as a whole class. Again I modelled and then I had various children display their images on the Apple TV and we talked out the things that were the same and different. I tried to keep it simple when they did their recording and asked them to find one thing that was the same and one thing that was different. This seemed to work really well and we will take this further the next time we work on "compare".

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