This afternoon in the AT&T Classroom the Wait Primary first graders were introduced to two new creativity tools that they will be using in their writing assignments. Cartoonify is a web-based tool for building a cartoon avatar.The tool offers an extensive gallery of features for creating and customizing an avatar including facial shapes, smiles, eye lashes, eye brows, eye glasses, ears, hair, and clothes. The students really enjoyed exploring the gallery and creating their own avatar figures. The students will use their avatars for inclusion in an opinion piece in which they will write about what they have learned in the AT&T Classroom, what they have enjoyed and why.
Later this afternoon the first graders were introduced to Padlet, a free web-based tool that functions as a virtual wall or bulletin board where people can exchange thoughts on a common topic. Users are able to post several forms of content including text, images, and videos. The tool can be used in many different ways including a place to post announcements, assignments or messages as well as an online space for brainstorming, creating a KWL, or a space for posting links to specific websites. Ms. Kulik created a Padlet wall for today’s writing activity that included a class photo as the background. Together as a class, the students drafted posts about their favorite tools that they have used over the past two weeks in the AT&T Classroom.
The first graders were also introduced to some new resources they will be using for math review. The resources are hosted on the Math Playground website and include Island Chase Subtraction, Thinking Blocks Jr. and Math Monster Subtraction.