Ideas for Integrating Technology in Grades 1-3

For the past two years, I have worked with grades 1-3 as their Technology Teacher, but also helping the teachers integrate technology into their classrooms. Here is a list of some of these ideas that I hope spark some interest in your classroom!

Digital Learning Day 2012

Our school participated in Digital Learning Day this year to promote the integration of technology in the classroom. Two other teachers and myself began by developing a list of ideas as a springboard for the day.

We then created a Google Form where teachers could share the activities they did on this day, with a reflection of how it went and where it could be used again. I was very impressed with all the new ideas our teachers had!  A copy of the flyer and what we did can be found here.

Technology Curriculum Map

When asked about my curriculum for K-3, and 7th/8th tech classes, I guess I do a month by month pacing guide. Last year for my K-3 classes, I listed all my possible units and then tried to put them in a logical order for the year. For example, September starts with internet safety/navigation/email. Then October is graphic organizers which leads into November's word processing. We then work with pictures in December, slide shows in January, spreadsheets in February (fits in with the 100th day of school), desktop publishing in March, digital stories in April and then May is "use your toolbox" choices. Every grade does that same unit, but I add more difficulty as we move up the grades. This allows us to bring in different tools, for example the younger grades focus heavily on Microsoft Office, but higher grades could add in different software and Web 2.0 if possible. I am loosely following this pattern this year, but some of the order is changing as I work more closely with what the teachers want to do in their classrooms.

Here you can find our district guidelines, aligned with the ISTE standards. I currently teach K-3 according to the spiraling plan I mentioned in my comments above and that is the document titled Primary Tech Plan.  I also teach 7th and 8th grade, and we are focusing a lot on self creation in these areas rather than always relying on using the internet for pictures.

I have not included the specific projects because they change year to year depending on the teacher's requests. On this blog, I am trying to post as many projects as I can which will hopefully spark ideas in your classroom. 

For more great ideas, here, here, and here are plans from other school districts, and here is a great Technology Integration Matrix (TIM) illustrating technology integration to enhance learning.

Observation Checklist

I spend a lot of my classtime walking around the room helping and observing students, a great way to do formative assessment in the moment. In the past, I used a checklist to keep track of different things, like who has finished what and were the students on task. During my Assessment and Differentiation class, I decided that my project would be to improve this form so that it could be used during project based learning activities to assess many different areas.

My internet search provided me with a lot of individual checklists; and while they listed excellent skills to assess, I wanted a whole-class form. In the end, I am back to the same format I used to use, however I now have a more specific purpose for the form. Each day I will decide what I want to assess such as specific content skills, on-task behavior, who finishes when (for differentiation purposes), who works independently without a lot of support, who answers others questions, and who asks a lot of questions. My main means of documentation will be a 1,2,3 rating system, though I could also use codes to help me distinguish if the off-task behavior was for talking (T), or paying too much attention to others (B), or maybe they didn't understand what to do (U). For the 1.2,3 rating system, 1 is the learning stage, 2 is the practicing stage and 3 is automatic stage. In the short class periods I have, I was given the advice to mark the 1's and 3's first, and everyone else is a 2.

21st Century skills can more easily be assessed if I list them on my checklist. Ultimately, as I learn more specifics about my classes, I can provide for differentiated assignments based on what data I am collecting with this checklist. Even though I am a specials teacher and see 20 classes a week, this checklist can easily be adapted for use in the classroom to assess all the skills mentioned above, plus many more. If you would like to try this checklist, you may download it here.

Engaged Learning & 21st Century Skills

For me, the 21st Century Skills of Creativity, Collaboration, Critical Thinking and Communication go hand in hand with engaged learning. I am lucky enough to be a part of our school's project based learning team, a team of very dedicated teachers who are working together to provide meaningful, engaged learning experiences for our students. We presented a video of our journey this year to our school board last night, which you can view below.





As you can see, engaged learning and the 4 C's go hand in hand, and often overlap. No where in the video did you see students sitting in rows, listening to a lecture or completing a worksheet. One of my goals for next year is to continue to structure lessons that do not center around whole group lecture, and model this for other teachers. I plan to accomplish this through better lesson design, small group instruction, providing a variety of resources such as what Kathie Nunley does in her classroom, and finally, by referencing the list I started on what to do instead of a worksheet or lecture. I would love it if you could add your thoughts to this list as well!

Create Your Own Avatar with My Avatar Editor

This is a cross post from my guest post on Freetech4teachers.com.


Working in the primary grades, I am always on the look-out for creative, no-account-required, Web 2.0 websites that are also kid-friendly. One that I have found to be very successful for all grades is My Avatar Editor. This website allows you to create a customized avatar based on the Mii characters of the Wii game system, and that in itself brings excitement for the students! It is very easy to use and after a quick demonstration, the students are ready to go. After customizing your avatar, it can be exported as a .jpeg file, or a .png which allows you to remove the background – very helpful when layering objects, and is then saved as a picture in your files for future use.



What have we used My Avatar Editor for? Younger students have created themselves and posted it in their blogs (since we don’t allow their picture and name to appear together on the internet). Older students have created a cast of characters to use in stories, projects and animations. My 1-8 students have used this independently and I am sure kindergarteners could also with some assistance saving it. In this day and age when it is so easy to copy a picture off the internet, I like to encourage students to create their own components to a project and this website makes it really easy to do so!

First Grade's New Netbooks

Last week we finally finished imaging the new first grade netbooks, putting them in a cart and giving the first grade teachers a quick demo of them. So the question is: What would you do with a netbook for each of your students? Every time I walked by one first grade teacher's room, he had come up with really authentic, engaging activities for his students to do with the new netbooks. Afterward, I asked him how we can get the rest of our teachers to do these kind of activities. His first answer was to share with them what he has done and how. So I am now sharing these ideas!


The very first activity the students worked on was to do their daily journal entry in Word. This was an activity they were completely comfortable doing independently (having done journaling every day in their class and having used Word in computer class a few times.) This allowed the teacher to help them with the logistics of using the new netbooks. When I walked in, every student was deeply engrossed in their writing.


The second activity spawned off the first and they wrote letters to the superintendent thanking him for the new netbooks. They have done letter writing before, so after a quick review they were off working. What an authentic task that involved language arts and communication skills!


Branching into more authentic communication skills, another activity was to send emails to their classmates, teacher and parents. Letter writing skills were reinforced again and when I came in the room, they were so eager to show me what they were doing! We had a few problems with correcting some inaccurate email addresses and navigating some message boxes that popped up, but they were thrilled to be doing this activity! They learned how to respond to their classmates emails and they also received responses from their parents. What positive reinforcement! Think of all the language arts and communication skills they were developing during this. Yes, they used kid spelling but that in no way inhibited their ability to communicate with each other through a written medium.


An activity I didn't get to see was when the teacher had them use Smart Notebook software (again something they were familiar with using) to create math review worksheets. They were given the choice of topics and the worksheets were completed by classmates. Math curriculum and creativity were definitely reinforced!


This particular first grade teacher is pretty technologically savvy, but he is also willing to take risks. He had no idea how it would work sending out emails, but he was willing to try. He is also very supportive of student choice and allowing for movement in his classroom (as the students help each other and show off their work to each other.) Not all teachers are willing to take such risks, but as he said, once an activity is successfully accomplished, share the experience!

Vision of Tech Use in the Classroom

Thanks to some great people that I am following on Twitter, I have learned many new ways to use technology in the classroom over the last two months, so much in fact, that I am overwhelmed. As I try to sort through all this great information and prepare myself to help the teachers at my school use more technology, I have been trying to find a way to organize my thoughts. I have made a few attempts at this and have re-written this blog a couple of times (and could keep revising it, but here it is!)

The thought finally came to me that I need to go back to what I learned on the first day of my Philosophy of Education class: when planning a lesson, keep in mind content, process and product. Once I started looking at organizing all the uses for technology according to this principal, things started to fall in place. Below I will attempt to explain my vision.

Authenticity: As I wrote in a previous blog , I strongly believe that we need to use technology in the classroom in an authentic manner, the same way you would use it in your life. If you need to contact someone for information, you use email, Twitter, Facebook, cellphones etc. If you want to research information you look for reliable web sites, videos, books, wikis and blogs (which give you great ideas!). If you want to present information to someone you keep your audience in mind and create a blog post, web site, slide show or video. How we pick which one to use is based on personal preference and our audience. Students should be able to do the same. Having every student work on Photo Story at the same time just to say you used technology is missing the goal of authenticity and will eventually bore students. Authenticity also helps differentiate. 

Content: What information will the student learn? With the explosion of resources on the internet, even when students research the same topic, they will find different information. Once they begin their research, different aspects of the topic will appeal to them and they may go off in different directions. Using technology to obtain content can be done by using different search engines, finding primary sources online, watching videos, or using social networking to contact experts.

Process: How will students learn the information? In addition to the above mentioned research, students will need to organize their information with graphic organizers, timelines, online notes and binders, and bookmark tags. They can use interactives to practice skills; they can share information and ideas and comment on them with each other; and they can listen to books and podcasts online. Backchanneling and blogging can be used to have real time discussions, while Skype and wikis can help connect us to other classrooms around the world. 

Product: How will students use the information? When they have all their information students can create many different products to showcase/present this information including blogs, posters, cartoons, timelines, videos, animations, digital stories, graphs, books and podcasts. What they use depends on student choice and their target audience; then they can share their product with the world.

Finally, don’t forget higher order thinking skills. Are you using technology primary on the lower end of Blooms? Or are you offering opportunities to use it more often on the higher end for comparing, evaluating, creating? As you may have noticed, many technologies can be used in multiple places. My goal is to help teachers be aware of when they can use technology, decide which one is the best fit and support them in using it. This is an ongoing, ever-changing process that we are involved in, and hopefully this post helps you organize your own uses for technology.