seesaw

Don’t Overthink Accommodations: Allowing Audio Responses on Seesaw

The majority of my students in my 4th grade classroom are able to use writing to explain their thinking and answer any given problem. They may need sentence starters or a bit of extra support, but they will be able to find success and mastery just by writing. However, there is always a student or two that need a little more than extra support, and would benefit from being able to respond to problems in different ways. Explaining answers aloud is a common IEP accommodation and strategy for our EL students, but can often be mentally draining to put into...

Easy, in the Moment Formative Assessment with Seesaw

Formative assessment is the piece of the teaching puzzle that allows us to quickly gauge how well our students are understanding the material we’ve taught. From there, we make the important decisions about where our lesson will go next. Do we need to reteach, or are our students ready to progress? Do some students need additional practice? And which students need to be pushed to achieve the next level? The best formative assessments will not only answer these questions but will also engage students in their own learning. Seesaw has a set of ready-to-go Check for Understanding Activities that make...

Celebrating Veterans Day

Students love an opportunity to celebrate a holiday. Unfortunately, I often forget to plan for holidays until the day before and I find myself in a last-minute pickle searching for engaging activities for my students. If you are anything like me and have yet to make plans to celebrate Veterans Day, check out some of the resources below.  Our Youngest Learners Letter Writing Veterans Day is a great day to have our students practice their letter writing skills Use. Consider using this free, printable thank you template if you’re looking for a simple paper-pencil activity. Here you can find it...

5 Ideas to Up Your Game with Content and Language Objectives

Looking for ways to change up how you use content and language objectives in your classroom? Below find 5 ideas on how to up your game with content and language objectives. Up Your Game Idea #1: Make it Routine Include a consistent presentation of your content and language objectives at the beginning of your class period. Consider including it with your bell work, including vocabulary that students will need to understand to be successful for the class period, or even reminding students of what they learned in the previous lesson. Want to use these templates as-is? Find them here on...

Making Learning Concrete with Hands-On Activities and Manipulatives

Practice and Application The 6th component of SIOP is Practice and Application. Practice and Application focuses on how will students will practice both the content and language objectives. It is the what and the how of the lesson. When we are thinking about Practice and Application, it’s important to keep three considerations in mind. Provide hands-on materials and/or manipulatives for students to practice using new content knowledge. Provide hands-on activities for students to apply content and language knowledge in the classroom. Use activities that integrate all language skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) In this blog post, we will be focusing...

Building Background with Seesaw

No two students enter our classroom with the same life experiences. This is especially true when you have English language learners as members of your classroom community. To help counter the differences in our students’ diverse backgrounds, we work on the SIOP strategy of Building Background. Building background simply means we prepare our students for what they are about to learn. There are three main considerations for when you are actively working on building background with students:  A student’s own background is important. As teachers, it is important that we recognize that students from culturally diverse backgrounds may struggle with...

Low Barrier, High Impact Accommodations

All accommodations are focused on one thing: how do we make the content accessible to the student? Several years ago, I was challenged to think about an educational Hippocratic Oath. What would be on my list of imperatives as an educator? “Do no harm” is the famous line everyone knows, but a more correct summary of the famous line written is, “As to diseases, make a habit of two things — to help, or at least to do no harm.” Do good comes before do no harm. In other words, we should be focusing on the good of all students...

Starting the Year Strong with Accessible Learning

At Elkhart, putting students first is at the heart of everything we do. One way to ensure all students learn is to be very intentional that every student can access course material. Below are a few ways to ensure your teaching is accessible to all students. Making Canvas work for your students If your Canvas course includes images that are for content – not just decoration – you need to include an “alt” description. The alt description is read by screen readers for users who are low vision so they have an understanding of what is being shown by the...

Back to School Activities with iPad

Are you looking for some back to school activities that introduce the iPad and/or Seesaw to your students? Look no further. Below you can find a small collection of activities that you can use to help bring technology into the classroom the first few weeks of school. K-2 Activities Reading Room – Seesaw Read Alouds:Interested in some back to school read alouds? Here you can find a Seesaw activity with links to 9 different read alouds for your scholars.  Check it out, here. Back to School with Seesaw: Need a good activity to introduce your students to the Seesaw Tools? Look...

Creativity in the Classroom – Embracing Photo

Friends, we’re in the final countdown to summer. Which means at this point, we’re all just trying to make it. Needs some fun ideas for keeping students engaged in your class? Consider adding some creative opportunities to your classroom activities! Using Apple’s Everyone Can Create curriculum, find ways to add in photo, video, drawing, even music to your class. Below we will highlight some of the fun photo activities that YOU could use and adapt to fit the needs of your students in order to include some creativity into your classroom! Everyone Can Create: Photo Accessed through your iPad on iBooks,...

Spotlight Activities on Seesaw!

As the end of the year draws near, are you looking for a way to keep your students engaged and excited about doing their Seesaw activities? Or in some cases, even just get students to complete? Well look no further! The spotlight seek and search activity adds an extra element of fun for the students. It is easy to create and can be used for any subject! Here’s how to create one broken down step by step. Creating your OWN spotlight Activities! Go to “My library” within your activity library and then click on “create new activity”. On the next...

Scratch Away Activities on Seesaw

Growing up, I always enjoyed scratching off my parents scratch lotto tickets. When looking for a way to recreate this for students, I found Scratch and Solve activities! You can use the “scratch” ability to make Seesaw work more engaging for your students. After inserting an image, you simply color over spaces to hide words from students! Students will use the eraser to “scratch” away to find a problem/work to complete. Create your own in 3 easy steps! Using Google Slides, create a template for students. This normally involves creating shapes to use as a holder for words or whatever...

Making Learning Accessible on Seesaw: Attaching Voice to ALL Objects

In its most recent update, Seesaw has provided users more functionality with its voice and audio features.  These updates provide a more robust learning experience by offering more flexibility with voice instruction on the Seesaw creative canvas.  By adding these features to its platform, Seesaw has made it easier for teachers to create activities and assignments that are more accessible to more students, thereby increasing student engagement and success.   Object voice support can help students in the following ways: Provide voice support for specific text boxes and other objects on the creative canvas Present multi-tiered instructions for different parts of...