EdTech @ ISB

Transforming Teaching & Learning

Category: Seesaw

ES Online Learning Exemplars: End of Year

June 8, 2020 / / 0 Comments

Online Learning Exemplars Main Table of Contents

Passion Project

Captivate: Grade 4 and 5 teachers ended the year with a passion project for students, allowing them to take ownership of their learning.

Johnson – Coding – Been working on this project for 5 months and finally was able to get his character to move

Cayla – created a 3-course meal – twice – as she reflected on the first one and realized she needed to use a different type of fish so make it again

Justin – Researched about the desert and its habitat

Sean – created his first documentary (project was to learn what a doc was and how to create) on Summer

Charlie – 15-page ppt on Lego Technics and how they work

Molly – Interviewed a photographer and did a 15-page ppt including techniques and her own shots and reflections

Eric – created a model ship out of popsicle sticks

 

PE and Health

Captivate: The PE teachers created an Obstacle Course mission for students. Their introduction included examples from each PE teacher around the world.

 

Visual Arts

Care: Visual Arts teachers found ways to allow students to practice mindfulness while also exploring their art skills.

 

Collaborate: Visual Arts teachers facilitated collaboration across grade levels during ‘Celebrate and Share the Arts’ week, creating systems so that students could comment on each other’s work.

 

Wellness Weeks

Care: The grade 5 team supported their students’ social & emotional wellbeing during wellness weeks.

 

ES Online Learning Exemplars: Week 7

March 16, 2020 / / 0 Comments

eLearning Exemplars Main Table of Contents

Feedback

Clarify: Teachers are using Seesaw to give students verbal and written feedback on their work.

 

Literacy

Captivate/Challenge: In grade 5, teachers are using Seesaw & Raz-Kids to provide asynchronous, small group guided reading.

Day 1 – book intro/vocab preview + listening to the text on Raz-Kids

Day 2 – mini-lesson about an accuracy strategy + reading/quiz on Raz-Kids

Day 3 – comprehension mini-lesson + re-reading in Raz-Kids and a Seesaw or Flipgrid response

Data is collected and used to guide instruction for the next week. This week the comprehension lesson came directly from the students missing the compare/contrast question last week on Raz-Kids.

Captivate/Clarify: Teachers are using Zoom for small-group reading & writing conferences. This allows teachers to give feedback in real-time and for students to connect live with their teachers and peers.

 

Math

Captivate/Clarify: In grade 1, teachers are using Zoom to reteach concepts for small groups. This live session took less than 15 minutes with 4 students.

 

ES Online Learning Exemplars: Week 6

March 9, 2020 / / 0 Comments

eLearning Exemplars Main Table of Contents

Data Tracking

Classroom Management: This online data collection system allows teachers to track information from SeeSaw, feedback, and 1:1 meetings on Zoom.

Math: This spreadsheet allows the teacher to track daily student progress on targeted skills.

 

Differentiation

Clarify: Quizlet can be used to create individualized, targeted vocabulary practice for students for the current writing unit.

Captivate: In English enrichment, Ishbel records and shares short videos for each group of students to specifically target their learning needs.

ES Online Learning Exemplars: Week 5

March 2, 2020 / / 0 Comments

eLearning Exemplars Main Table of Contents

Math

Clarify: In this lesson, Andrew and the 4th grade team use a teach, try check cycle by asking students to pause the video at various times throughout. They also provide content and language objectives.

Music

Care: In this video, Skye and Foxy find an engaging way to remind students to do their music assignments via song.

Reader’s Workshop

Clarify: In this post, Victoria provides content & language objectives and uses audio and text to give directions in her grade 2 dual-language class. She uses visuals in the assignment and provides a model for students.

Routines

Classroom Management: The grade 1, 2, and 3 teams provide students with weekly overviews that help them consolidate their learning for the week.

G1 Weekly in 3 languages

G2 Weekly Overview

G3 Weekly Overview

Writer’s Workshop

Clarify: In this post, Clare uses her own writing to model her expectations for students. She also includes content and language objectives.

ES Online Learning Exemplars: Week 4

February 25, 2020 / / 0 Comments

eLearning Exemplars Main Table of Contents

PE and Health

Captivate: In this lesson, Josie & Andy show students how to use items that are available to them in their homes and encourage them to engage the entire family in playing target games.

Homeroom

Care: Pippa provides her grade 4 students with time to interact and engage with each other in a meaningful way via Zoom.

Captivate: In this activity, the grade 5 team provides their students with a menu of ways that they can engage their creativity and share with each other via Flipgrid.

Music

Clarify: In this lesson, Lucas provides video instructions accompanied by written instructions in English and Chinese. He also includes COLOs for his rhythm lesson in which he includes visual support.

ES Online Learning Exemplars: Weeks 1-3

February 7, 2020 / / 0 Comments

eLearning Exemplars Main Table of Contents

Routines

Care/Confer: One way to do set new routines and expectations is to ensure students have a dedicated learning space with necessary materials, free of distractions. To set up this routine, Tom shared his own learning space in a Seesaw post and asked students to share their learning spaces in the comments.

Clarify: In this flexible learning environment, making expectations, learning objectives, and the “schedule” clear will support students in building habits and developing a routine. For 4SM, Scott created a slideshow for the day before posting his Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop Lessons. The slideshow includes the Content and Language Objectives for the day. He adds reminders, directions, and sentence frames to help his students be successful.

Math

Care/Clarify: In this lesson, Julie reteaches a concept for her students who need extra practice/support using a combination of visuals, text, and audio.

Captivate/Confer/Consolidate: In this lesson, the grade 4 team uses pictures to engage students and encourages them to discuss their learning with their parents. They then helps students solidify their learning by creatively telling their teacher everything they know about fractions.

Reader’s Workshop

Challenge: In this lesson, Renee revisits Pointer Power and encourages her Kinder students to use this strategy to support their reading.

Clarify/Challenge/Consolidate: After explaining how to describe characters, Veronika challenges students to consolidate their learning by sharing a picture of their stop and jot. View lesson.

Writer’s Workshop

Care/Captivate: In this lesson, Judy speaks slowly and clearly. She uses visuals to engage students and support the flow of the mini-lesson.

Care/Clarify: In this lesson, Stephanie shares that she misses them and acknowledging that she will be reminding them of things they already know in this video. By re-explaining the strategy of ‘crashing the parts together,’ she clarifies understanding for her students.

Clarify: In this lesson, Erin offers structure and support via both a template and detailed, step-by-step directions.

Visual Arts

Care/Captivate/Clarify: The ES Visual Arts team has been making short videos for each day of eLearning. These videos have demonstrated care by making personalizing learning for students through being silly and having fun. They captivate students because they are short, interesting, and funny. They help to clarify by making the learning explicit through clear content & language objectives and directions. The team has also been leaving voice recorded comments for each student response, which helps students feel connected. 

Mix-a-Pokemon (Kinder)

Superhero Pose Drawing (Grade 3)

Seesaw for Student Led Conferences

January 15, 2018 / / 0 Comments
Here are some recommendations for how to get the most from Seesaw in the upcoming Student Led Conferences. We would love to help you in any way we can – invite us to a team meeting, make a time for a one-to-one chat, or invite us to your class to guide student activities.

How can Seesaw enhance SLCs?

  • Begin by creating an “SLC 2018” folder for students to categorise their most effective SLC posts
  • Establish criteria that leads students through the process of reviewing their Seesaw journal and curating posts that highlight their learning most effectively;
    • Posts that demonstrate individualised student choice
    • A range of in progress and finished works (formative/summative, process/showcase)
    • Work across a range of L21 Skills and disciplines
    • A demonstration of incremental learning over different timeframes
  • Once students have added their best posts to the “SLC 2018” folder, they should review each post to make sure that the point they wish to articulate in the conference is clearly communicated (this could work well as a peer feedback/critique activity).
  • Students can then create a new comment with appropriate reflection and clarification if necessary to guide their conference.
Thanks and we hope to hear from you soon,

 

Sam & Bec

Seesaw: Getting started

September 19, 2017 / / 0 Comments

How to make your first welcome announcement to your families and students

  1. Take a picture or a few pics of your new homeroom class
  2. From your school iPad open the Seesaw app, or, if you are on your laptop, log into https://app.seesaw.me/
  3. If this is the first time you are logging in to Seesaw, you will need to select “I am a teacher” and log in with your ISB email address and password
  4. Click on the large green “+” symbol
  5. Select “Send Announcement” > Send To: All Students and Families (if some parents aren’t connected yet they will receive instructions on Monday afternoon)
  6. Type your welcome message to your students and families
  7. Upload your class photo(s) from your camera roll
  8. When you have completed your message, click the large green tick button and it will appear in student & parent feeds.

Please note, as new parents will not yet be connected, this welcome post will be made in the student announcements for all users to see. In the future (when all parents are connected) teachers will be asked to use “Family Announcements” to ensure student journals don’t contain parent communications.

On Monday, Tina, Angela and I will distribute printed QR codes and instructions to all homeroom teachers, for families to connect to their child’s Seesaw journal. Families will need to follow the instructions to download the Seesaw Family app and scan the code in order to see any Family Announcements or student posts.

Throughout Monday, we will prioritize our time to support any teachers who require help with Seesaw. We’ll be available for 1:1 help all day including after school. Please be in touch or stop by the ES Library office if you need any help.

What is Seesaw?

Seesaw is a student-driven portfolio platform that is used across the ES to empower students to document, share and reflect upon their learning journey throughout the academic year and across their years in the elementary school.

As part of our Seesaw Common Agreements, there are certain tasks and setup procedures that each teacher should do once their class has been created. There are also some introductory lessons/ideas that can help you get started using Seesaw in your class.

You can use this checklist to guide you.

Setting Up Seesaw

  • Ensure preferred names are correct in your class list
  • Invite all specialist teachers as “co-teachers” to your class (except Chinese as they have their own Seesaw classes)
  • Manage settings: student likes & comments, post moderation, parent comments (as appropriate to your age and class group)
  • Create color-coded folders for portfolios (L21) and content areas:
    • Innovation & Creativity (Purple) 
    • Communication & Collaboration (Yellow) 
    • Inquiry, Critical Thinking & Problem Solving (Blue) 
    • Leadership & Responsibility (Green) 
    • Global Thinking (Red) 
    • As well as folders for Math, ELA, Visual Arts, Performing Arts, PE, Science, Social Studies
  • Create any additional folders as required
  • Print out your class account QR code so students can join your class
  • Send home “parent note” generated by Seesaw

Teaching with Seesaw

  • Post a “Welcome!” message to all students/parents.
  • Teach (or co-teach with your Tech Facilitator) an “Intro to Seesaw” lesson
  • Teach (or co-teach with your Tech Facilitator) a RUA lesson based on Seesaw use
  • Plan (or co-plan with your Tech Facilitator and/or grade level team) a variety of ways to integrate Seesaw into all curriculum areas

You can also get a digital version of this document/table.

Icons as a Visual Scaffold

September 19, 2017 / / 0 Comments

Seesaw is like many applications in that it uses icons to create a visual fluency to help learners navigate the different features and tools available to its users. Many of these icons are consistent with so many other iOS apps and it makes sense for us to scaffold our learners in how these tools can be explicitly applied in the process of learning.

Recently, Pana Asavavatana shared a series of useful posters designed to assist Pre K – 3 students in their deliberate use of processes and features in Seesaw. She wanted her students to move beyond simply checking off everything they post and think more deeply about what they were doing in Seesaw and why. Each poster links one of the Seesaw tool icons with a student statement that encourages students to make a conscious decision about what they are doing and why.

The posters are available in English and Mandarin and are free for you to download and use (thanks to @PanaAsavavatana). As always, let myself or Bec know anytime you would like any Seesaw resources or support for you and your students.

Download: Thinking with Seesaw (English)

Download: Thinking with Seesaw (Mandarin)

Sam

How to update Seesaw class settings

September 13, 2017 / / 0 Comments

The ES are doing great things in Seesaw, including lots of student, teacher and parent activity. There are a range of different settings you can explore to find ways to customise the Seesaw experience to your class or grade level. In the following video, I’ll show you how to:

  • Add specialist and co-teachers to class journals
  • Edit students’ preferred names & icons
  • Add parents & allow parent access
  • Add/edit folders & skills
  • Allow student comments & “likes”

We will continue to add Seesaw resources to the Ed Tech blog. In the meantime, please let Bec and myself know anytime you have a question or celebration around Seesaw or if there is another resource you think would benefit the school.

Sam

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