Create. Interact. Inspire! www.activitycircle.com

We are thrilled to announce the browser or web-based version of Activity Spot for students to use on Chromebooks, Macs and PCs. As more schools implement Chromebooks in the classroom, teachers and students have been asking about a Chromebook version of our student app and we’re happy to provide this first version of one.

How to use the web-app

When you assign activities to your students, your student will:

Open the student web app.

Enter his or her student specific access code to interact with the activities assigned. Student codes are available in the "Setup Classroom" section of the ActivityCircle website.

For a quick look at this browser-based student app, we  prepared a few "demo" student codes for you.

Open the student web app.

Enter one of these "Grade level student codes":

For Kindergarten-Grade 1 enter code: 8ZAZUW

For Grades 3-5 enter code: 7LSAOX

For Grades 6-8 enter code: 9M8WBS

For Grades 9-10 enter code: F2OOET

The engaging activities you see on the web app using these access codes were created by inspiring teacher-authors Cathy Hink, Margaret Greco, Emily Kissner and Kathy Burdick.

If you have any questions regarding using the app, contact us at [email protected].

You can create an activity on Frolyc to send pictures to student app. Students can view the picture, create annotations on it, can label it, can draw and write over it. With such an activity, you could

In Science, you could send diagrams to students for labeling.

In Engineering, you could send a machine for students to label the parts.

In Math, you could send photographs of worksheets that you already have, for them to work on.  

In ELA, ask them to label pictures using nouns and adjectives or write sentences describing the picture.

I am sure you can think of plenty more ideas!

Here are the mechanics of how to create such an activity:

1. In the authoring interface, choose “Drawing” activity type.

2. Click on the image and search for an image that you want to use. You can also upload one that you already have.

3. Write a question or prompt accompanying the picture.

4. Publish the activity to the catalog and preview it to see how it would appear in student view.

5. Here is an example of a student’s response for the example activity we just created.

We are excited to announce new feature updates to Activity Spot v1.0! 

1. Revealing Answers

Student: "What are the possible answers to this question? I can’t learn from this because its not telling me what I am doing wrong. Give me some instant feedback."

If your students are saying this, then we have addressed this. All activities with answer key now has an “animated reveal”! Students can see what the answers are, learn and improve.

2. Saving progress within an activity

Student: "Common Core wants me to go back & forth from text to questions. I need to be able to look at text or watch a video yet again before answering. Those PARCC & SBAC tests need me to do that. How do I use Activity Spot to prepare for those?"

Here is another student request that has been addressed. Students can now navigate back and forth between answering questions and reading text or watching video and then get back to answering. Activity Spot saves progress within an activity, saving student work as they navigate between the many activity pages. 

3. Partial Credit

Student: "What! I got a score of 0 because I missed one answer?!"

If your students felt this way, then this has been fixed as well. All activities including concept maps, sequencing & cause-effect organizers now have partial credit. Give your Ss that little motivation to reach perfect score in small steps.

4. Auto-save open ended answers

Student: "I typed my answer... I did. Not sure why you are not seeing it" 

It was frustrating to type an entire passage and lose it because you forgot to touch "Save". Now, with "auto-save" teachers instantly see Ss writing even if students forget to touch that "Save" button.

5. Power Vocabulary Using Clues In Word Search

This brand new feature was asked for by High school science teacher and technology coach Sweta Patel. She wanted to let her students learn and practice academic vocabulary alongside other contextual activities. This is also a powerful & super fun way to build academic vocabulary in any subject area. Click here to read details on this feature.

Update (or download) the latest version of Activity Spot from the App Store now to avail these super useful & productive features. 

Please leave a review for Activity Spot in the App Store. It helps other teachers understand the app better!

We are excited to present a new feature in Activity Spot's word search! 

You may now specify definitions, clues or hints to vocabulary words, giving students the challenge to not just find the words but to deduce the word before locating it on the grid. Use this feature to make vocabulary learning more fun and challenging.

Here are some activities we have put together to highlight this feature. Try these activities out and then create your very own. What you create can be aligned with your current lessons. Make it contextual and fun.

Be sure to update your version of Activity Spot to v1.0 to enable this feature.

4 examples of "academic vocabulary search"

Elementary School Geometry Vocabulary

  2. Elementary School Geography Vocabulary

  3. Middle School Gods Of Greek Mythology Vocabulary

4. High School Genetics Vocabulary

Here are the steps to create your own:

Login to Frolyc and access the authoring tool.

Create an activity and choose the "Word Search" activity type.

Select a grid size from the possible sizes (3x3, 5x5, 10x10, 12x12) depending on your grade level and length of vocab words.

Enter the words and clues to the words. 

Publish the activity & assign to students.

Have students work on it on Activity Spot version 1.0 and above.

Using different texts across Lexile bands and using activities that address different skills, you can effectively implement Depth Of Knowledge (DoK) in your ELA instruction.

The Center for College & Career Readiness emphasizes this:

In essence: To master "complexity", one needs to understand, recall and apply.

The "Nutcracker" activity on Frolyc demonstrates to you how to implement DoK in ELA keeping this key idea in mind.

1. Present text along with video.

This specific text for the Nutcracker is at Lexile band 460. 

2. Pose questions addressing DoK-1 & DoK- 2

For DoK-1, pose simple questions that make students recall information from text, understand the meanings of words in text, see how the words relate to each other etc. 

In multiple choice quiz, you can address DoK-2. Here, students have to associate information that they already know to the current context. E.g. genre of the text that they just read.

3. Analyzing & organizing information - DoK 2

Analyzing and organizing information may fall in DoK level 2 based on the information presented.

Presenting information read in a different format like drawing, addresses Dok-2 as well:

4. Writing for DoK-3

Writing short passages while quoting details from text is a DoK level 3 skill.

Teachers assign students an activity a day. Students work on their assigned activity in the comfort of their home environment. Teacher reviews their work as and when the assignment is completed. How cool is that?

We are hearing positive feedback from teachers who are doing this. Parents love it because kiddos are now reading & writing on iPad and not just playing games. 

Would you like to try? Here are the steps to get you going:

Assign each student an activity.

Give each student their unique student access code. You can find this code for each student within each classroom details page on frolyc.com

If students don't have Wi-Fi at home, make sure they "sync" their activity data at school over school Wi-Fi.

Students open Activity Spot on their iPad(s) at home and interact. 

You review their performance and responses on your Frolyc reporting dashboard. You will see updates as and when their responses are submitted.

Life as an entrepreneur involves tons of decision making. For each decision, you have some information and you need to make your best call given this. Now, each day involves 100s of such decisions. Decision making is a tough mental skill. It is energy-consuming and can lead to mental fatigue. 

I was thinking about this and wanted to see what other professions also called for decision making as a core skill in  "vast quantities". Some that come to mind - President of USA (or leader of any country), CEO of a company... and then maybe a teacher? And then I came across this info-graphic.

Teaching is inherently a creative profession. Successful teachers create or find learning material to achieve student learning outcomes in relevant, engaging and inspiring ways. 

We interviewed a teacher-author Emily Kissner to understand why she creates activities on Frolyc for her students & how she uses them in her class.

  Visit Emily's blog for teaching ideas on expository text.

Why do you create activities for your students?

Emily: I love to see students learning and engaged, and I like to offer them choices in reading and writing. By creating activities, I can make sure that I am addressing student needs and even interests while aligning the content to the learning objectives I have for them and the standards I need to meet.

How do you use Frolyc & Activity Spot iPad app?

Emily: Frolyc allows me to publish my activities to iPad in real-time. So, I can tailor the activities according to my lesson schedules.

 I can gather together texts and videos on a topic and design questions and open-ended responses that guide students into higher level thinking. I can also give students who need more time with a concept the opportunity to revisit and review important ideas.

Q: How many iPads do you have & how do you use it?

Emily: I have 2 iPads...and kids usually use them in pairs. I use them during classroom transitions, independent reading time, arrival and departure. Now that it's become a routine, kids are asking to use it!

Q: How do students react to your activities?

Emily: They love it. Here is a specific example. We were discussing oceans in class & I had created an activity on oceans. The activity involved writing. Most kids need a lot of help when it comes to writing. One kid in my class wrote much more on the device than he ever does in class! I was just amazed at the depth of his response and how it verges on the poetic. Here is his response:

I have noticed that my students especially like it when I add things that we've already covered in class. For example, we watched the "Prepositions" video in class...students are choosing to access that activity and try it out again because they like the song so much!  

Q: What advice do you have for teachers starting to use Activity Spot?

Do you have students with many different abilities? Frolyc (teacher interface) & Activity Spot (student interface) together make a high-interest tool to fill in gaps, teach new concepts, and stretch students to reach new levels.

Struggling students: For struggling readers, Frolyc can be a high-interest tool. These students light up when I offer them the iPad to use during arrival and dismissal times. They choose from activities that I have selected for them and engage with different kinds of texts. They like to have the opportunity to listen to text read aloud, and appreciate the videos as another way to gain information.

These are some of the favorite activities for struggling readers:

Digging Mole Crabs

Bodies of Water

What Is a Creek?

Advanced students: Frolyc offers a way for advanced students to move ahead, as well! In fact, activities on Frolyc can show these readers complex text and ideas. Of course, advanced fourth graders like to explore videos and different texts as well! 

Building the Panama Canal

Emily Dickinson

Fairy Shrimp

Endangered Species

Assigning different activities for different students is easy! I like to give kids a variety of choices in addition to our regular classwork activities.

What are your favorite activities to use to help students of all ability levels?

    In order for students to talk meaningfully about characters, they need to be able to identify and support character traits. This is often easier said than done! However, there are some easy things that reading teachers can do to help students learn about character traits. Here are my favorites:

    Activity Spot works well for helping students to find and support character traits! Here are some activities that I have created. But don't stop here--add some of your own activities for your students.

Expand students' word knowledge: In the activity Character Traits, students read about five different character traits. Then, they use these character traits to write about characters.

Use embedded questions: The activity Thomas and the Teapot includes embedded questions to help students think about character traits throughout the story. For students who are still building reading stamina, these kinds of questions are wonderful for chunking a story.

Teach the difference between traits and emotions: The activity Character Traits and Emotions explains how traits are different from emotions. 

What other activities can you create to help students learn about character traits?

Many students and adults report that they prefer learning from videos to learning from text. But what are the differences between these two forms of communication?

  Teaching students how to compare videos to written texts is important. This is at the heart of Common Core Standard 9: "Analyze how two or more authors address similar themes and topics in order to build knowledge or to compare the approaches the authors take."

   Readers need to be able to see what they gain (and what they lose) from a video presentation. Opportunities to view videos and compare them to written texts help students to learn how to compare different forms on the same topic.

   Activity Spot offers a way for teachers to craft activities to help students compare videos and written texts. In this activity about Emily Dickinson, students read a biographical text and compare it to a promotional video for an Emily Dickinson garden event. Then they answer questions related to the purposes of each text.

The beauty of working with Activity Spot means that students have immediate access to both the written text and the video in a sheltered digital environment.

   Questions to help students think about videos and written texts include:

   -How could the video enhance an understanding of the written text?

   -Which details are highlighted by both the video and the text?

   -How are the two texts structured? 

   -Which would be the best order to experience the texts? Why?

  Have you made activities that help students compare written texts to videos? Try out Activity Spot and Frolyc!

When I was first introduced to Activity Spot I was enthralled with its capability and was eager to get started. After all I have been writing lessons for over 30 years and I prided myself in trying to make them constructivist, fun and engaging. I quickly registered and opened my first authoring link. But something happened. I became paralyzed. I couldn’t decide what to do next. I wanted to make a lesson for fifth graders but couldn’t conceive how to lay out my six pages. How could this happen? I have written for Scholastic, Pearson, Learning A-Z and the state of Texas yet I found myself with a huge writers block. I could not get off square one when this was something I was so motivated to do.

 A voice inside my head said simplify, simplify. Make it easy Di something even a kindergartner could do. So, instead of making the best interactive plan in the whole creation I started thinking what was the easiest most needed lesson I could make? You see I ha made the classic mistake of not reading the direction first. In this case I had not familiarized myself with the systems tools. I just assumed it would come to me, or I could figure it out as I went. For me, this approach wasn’t working.

So I thought, “What is something every kindergarten teacher teaches at the beginning of the year and so would love an interactive lesson for her students to do?” I came up with numbers and letters. Finding 4 was my very first Activity Spot lesson. It only uses one template - the drawing template. I found the drawing template to be the most versatile, constructivist and easiest to use. I wanted the students to “show what they know” and the drawing template allows for this.

So I had up to six pages to fill and I started thinking, “What do you want children to know about four? What opportunities for learning do you want to open?” I found that putting information in a table helped me organize my thoughts.

Once I got my flow down this simple procedure made it easy for me to explore the other templates. My second lesson was “I Know the Sound of B”. In this lesson I was ready to explore using the capability of linking to videos to build background. Next, I wanted the children to be able to show me what they learned, that they indeed listened to the video so I added the concept map, multiple choice and word search templates. I discovered that I could drag the pages on the sides and reorder them. That was great because I made mistakes and changed my mind about the sequencing.

 I would periodically go ahead and published my activity and view it through the test ID that the system gives you even though I was not completely done. I did not care that the activity was not complete as I thought the odds of anyone finding it right away and using it were slim. It was more important to me that the activity actually played out how I envisioned it.

 Once I like the flow, I published my first activity and I felt a huge sense of accomplishment. I was stoked now and went on to create three more lessons that sitting. 

So, my advice in making your first activity:

Start with a very easy concept that you know well (it is OK the topic matches content in grades below where you teach)

Limit your activity to one or two templates.

Make a concept map, a page flow, of how you are going to execute your lesson.

Publish it a couple of times to check that the flow is what you envisioned.

PUBLISH IT!

Once you have done one lesson, the second is a breeze and you can start right away making lessons targeting the needs of your students and your classroom.

Happy lesson making!

- By Katherine Burdick

First appeared on Kathy Burdick's blog.

Miss. Brink and her students tested our student authoring feature towards the end of last school year. 

Read her post on how she got started: http://missbrink.blogspot.com/2014/04/learning-to-frolyc.html

and her post on how her students used the Activity Spot app in their Tinkering project:

Students have different needs and abilities. The more you differentiate and address a student's needs, the more engaged a student is in class. One way to do this is to setup student groups based on a certain criteria. E.g. group by reading level, group by quickness in grasping mathematical concepts, group by need for repetitive exercises etc. Once you have these groups, you can tailor and assign content that works well for each student group.

In this post, we show you how to you can achieve this using Frolyc website & Activity Spot iPad app.

Step 1: Setup student groups

Step 2: Create or search the activity catalog for content that addresses a differentiated criteria. 

If you look at the details of each activity, you will see that they differ only in the reading level.

Step 3: Assign each activity to specific student groups. Or, assign each activity to specific students. 

Your task is now done.

When your students enter their access code(s) on Activity Spot iPad app, they will only see the activities assigned to them.

That's it. Hope this mechanism comes of use to you as you try to engage every learner in your classroom.

As much as we have been busy developing new features for Frolyc and Activity Spot, we are seeing teachers busy with preparing for the new school year. 

1. Teacher workshops

In TX, teachers who have used Frolyc & Activity Spot, this past school year are conducting workshops for other teachers. The pioneering teachers are sharing with others the possibilities of the Frolyc platform and Activity Spot app.  We are thrilled to share this quote about Frolyc & Activity Spot from two 5th Grade teachers:

2. Planning, Creating & Organizing

Teachers are spending their summer in preparation for the new school year by creating activities that their students will use. Organizing, planning and executing are critically important tasks for every teacher. We are proud to help teachers in this process.

 3. Creating premium activities

Frolyc and Activity Spot are great tools for helping students to recognize characteristics of persuasive texts. 

Build a Butterfly Garden: In this activity, students will learn about characteristics of persuasive text. Then, they will read a persuasive essay, answer questions, and view a related video. After comparing the essay and video, students will explain whether or not they would like to build a butterfly garden. (Grades 4, 5)

Daylight Savings Time: This activity presents two different viewpoints on daylight savings time. After reading the texts and answering questions, students are asked to explain their own point of view. (Grades 3, 4, 5)

Persuasive Writing: Older students can review the basics of persuasive writing with this activity. (Grades 9 and 10)

With Frolyc and Activity Spot, you can present students with lots of examples of persuasive texts--essays, advertisements, and more. What activities can you create?

It is so important for students to write open-ended responses! Whether they are responding to text, writing about a picture, or recoding ideas, students learn how to grapple with ideas and put thoughts into words by writing open-ended responses.

Of course, lugging piles of responses back and forth to school can be tough. This is why I'm enjoying experimenting with student responses on the iPad. Through Frolyc and Activity Spot, students and teachers can write and read open-ended responses from anywhere.

The first step is to create an activity. You can include text and video if you like. You could also just make a single-page activity.

Once you have your pages set up, you will type in your prompt. You can add a picture as well. In my example below, you can see that students are writing about a body of water.

Once you publish the activity to the iPad, you can assign it to students. Students can interact with the activity and try out all of the features.

This is what the open-ended response screen looks like for students.

They can click on the image to see a larger version if needed.

After they have written, you can see their work back on the text assignment page. Simply click "View Student Performance".

You will see students who have completed the activity. Then, you can see what they have written.

I love this response and how it asks more questions. What great information for me as a teacher!