Today’s Contributor: Stacey Shapiro
I am a 1st Grade Teacher at Zilker Elementary, This is my 21st year teaching in AISD, third year as our campus CIC, and each year I’ve focused on technology in my classroom with my early childhood learners. I am also a BrainPOP Certified Educator and a Seesaw Ambassador.
Last year I wrote a blog post on “How I found Seesaw to provide my students with a voice to explain their thinking and a online portfolio.”
This year I wanted to write about next steps with Seesaw.
Last year was my first year using Seesaw. I thought I would use it as an online portfolio to keep track of my students’ work, a way for my students to explain their thinking since I couldn’t rely on them just writing about it, especially at the beginning of the school year; and a way to involve the parents so that they could have a glimpse of what their child was doing at school. As the year went on I soon found that Seesaw was so much more!
As defined by Seesaw, “Seesaw is a platform for student engagement. It inspires students of all ages to do their best and saves teachers time. Seesaw inspires engagement by giving students powerful creative tools to capture their learning. They’re even more motivated knowing they can show their learning to classmates, teachers and even families right in the app.” This is so true!
This year I wanted to share the next steps with Seesaw, implementing Seesaw within all of the core subject areas. I was able to do this in three main ways. First, I took photos of pages that I had the students complete as a paper and pencil task. Then, students would complete the same activity using Seesaw. Some were group activities and others were individual (ex. a Thanksgiving activity, a Winter Holidays Venn Diagram, and a review of Natural Resources). This way I saved paper, incorporated technology, and gained the ability to share with parents right away.
Another way was “App-smashing,” using more than one app at a time. For each of these I used at least one other app besides Seesaw and combined them together. Seesaw is compatible with any app or website that supports exporting as a photo, video, PDF or link. Here is a link to apps compatible with Seesaw. https://help.seesaw.me/hc/en-us/articles/204910545-What-apps-is-Seesaw-compatible-with-
Some of these activities I have done for years but never had an easy platform to share them with families. Others were new ideas.
Click each image to view!
Shadow Puppet: Fiction Stories or Animal Research
Aging Booth and Chatterpix: When I am 100 Years Old
Pic Collage: Living and Non-Living
Chatterpix: Influential Americans Research Project
I could also easily upload projects from websites such as Build Your Wildself, ABCYA’s Word Cloud, Animoto, and Create-a-Graph.
Finally, Seesaw has added the Activity Library. Teachers are able to search activities by grade level and topic and then add them to class. Here is a short video to explain the new feature! What is the Activity Library?
Here is an example of one of the activities from the Activity Library:
These are examples of activities that my students did this past year. One way I used the activities was by providing my students with a choice. For example, for Valentine’s Day I uploaded six activities (including the two with hearts below) and students had to choose at least two to complete. We also used activities with our 5th grade Buddies (Parts of a Plant).
Finally, you have the ability to edit any activity from the library to meet your students’ needs or you can create your own activity. You can include a title, student instructions (can include examples and voice instructions), an optional student template, and teacher notes if desired.
Here is a link to short cuts which is handy when creating your own activities:
I’m looking forward to trying new activities with my students and creating my own this year! The possibilities are endless!