Interview with Teacher-Author Of Common Core aligned learning activities
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?
Emily: Think of how Activity Spot can solve problems in your classroom. A student who is not engaged during independent reading time, a student who already knows a great deal of content, a student who did poorly on a recent assessment, a topic that kids were really excited about but that you just can't spend much time on.
