Today was the #TechTakeout crew’s first day back at it, and we could not have had a better day! We delivered some fun learning to the fifth grade students and teachers at Johnson Elementary. These amazing teachers wanted to focus on Language Arts, and in particular main idea and details. Each pair of ITRTs broke off and hit the topic in a different way using various tech tools.

Since this is the first of many Tech Takeouts this year I’ll recap what our mission as a group. The elementary ITRT team comes together to work with a grade level on a specific skill where students need a little more help. While helping the students grasp concepts that have proven to be difficult for them we show the teachers a variety of tools. We don’t expect teachers to pull something like this off alone after we leave, but we want to give them new ideas that they can implement separately with the assistance of their ITRT as needed. The great thing about many of the tools we show off is that they can be used cross curricularly. As a team the ITRTs and classroom teachers look at data and come up with a topic that needs support. We love going to new places, meeting new students and teachers, and helping to turn up the fun in the classroom!

At Johnson we used iPhone Fake Text and Lino It to kick off the day. The students listened to a short paragraph about two friends, Justin and Andy, who were riding bikes in the park. Justin fell off his bike and was hurt. The paragraph described his fall and all his injuries. After listening to the paragraph the students launched the iPhone Fake Text website. We pretended to text Justin’s dad about his accident. We had to keep our text short and only send him the main idea from the paragraph. After creating our text we took a screenshot of our text message and added it to a Lino wall where we could see everyone’s main ideas. The kids had a blast “texting” and this concept could be used in so many different ways throughout the year!

Stephanie Wright and Alfonso Favale’s groups used Popplet to mind map out a story about a pet rock. Students had to show that the rock was the main idea and then show supporting details such as what type of rock they had, where it was found, characteristics of their rock (texture, color), and how their rock might be used. Students added a picture of their rock to their popplet. Students then exported their popplet as a jpeg. Students then imported their pictures into a padlet.

Jessica Robinson & Jon Wirsing’s group used a resource called Pixiclip. Our group started by setting Google Chrome to be their default browser. We found that the program worked better in Google Chrome and saved much faster than Internet Explorer. After our browser was set we launched PixiClip and practiced using the tools on the left hand side of our screen. Then we pulled in a JPEG from Server Shortcuts. Huge THANKS to Julie Smith for sharing these images with us (we missed you Mrs. Smith). Each image was a different science passage. The students read their passage and identified the main ideas. Then they turned on their webcams and recorded themselves describing their paragraphs and highlighting the main ideas. They saved their videos and pasted their embed codes into a Google Doc so I could share them with their teachers. Check out some of their samples.

Jim Covais and Matt Caratachea took children’s engineering, main idea/details, coding, and Makey Makeys and rolled it all into one crazy fun lesson! First, the students were each provided a passage to read. Each student had their own unique passage to work with, and this lesson could work with essentially any reading passage imaginable. The students were then tasked with making a table structure with the materials provided: toilet paper tubes, cardboard, and paper clips.

Once the structure was constructed the students cut their passage into sections separating the main idea and details. The main idea was attached to the top of the table and the details were attached to the legs of the table. This structure provided an excellent representation of how main idea and details are related. Details support the main idea, and in this case they are physically supporting the main idea. The students used paper clips to attach the pieces of the passage to their structure, this was a very important for the next part of the lesson. We broke out the Makey Makeys and attached the alligator clips to the paper clips on the structure to the Makey Makeys. The students connected the details to the arrows on the Makey Makeys and the main idea to the Space. When everything was set up the students went to a Scratch program that Mr. Covais had made. Usually we would have the students program this part, but due to the time constraints this seemed like a better option. Within the Scratch program Mr. Covais recorded his voice saying, “main idea” and, “details.” He linked the The students hooked the Makey Makeys to the computer and controlled their computer using their main idea/details structure.

(Space Bar = Main Idea, Arrow Keys = Details)

Karen Hues and Gina Browne’s group practiced main idea today using some great articles from Discovery Science and Newsela. Discovery Science can be accessed by going through Clever (you may also see this link in the server shortcuts). When students click on “Login with active directory”, they will be automatically taken to a screen of available resources for their schools. When you click on Discovery Science, it will take students right in and they will have access to all the reading passages, virtual labs, glossary, and more that this resource has to offer. In light of the recent weather events, we had students read about hurricanes and how they are formed. After reading, students posted on a Today’s Meet wall that we created. We made the wall active for an hour so students could share their ideas there for our activity. Next students checked out another great resource called Newsela. Newsela has current articles on a variety of topics. We checked out a science article that talked about how drones are being used in the eyewall of a hurricane to gather to help predict the storm’s path and intensity. Newsela has varied Lexile levels and by adjusting the level, it alters the number of words that appear in the article so that it is appropriate for each child’s reading level. After reading the article, students were able to take a short quiz with questions related to the article. Students were able to self check after the quiz since an answer key was provided. The classroom teacher created a classroom account, so she also had access to students’ progress on the quizzes.

Thank you so much to the amazing fifth grade team at Johnson Elementary! Look out Montrose we’ll see you next month!