Thursday, February 13, 2014

New Center: iPad Center!

Ooooh

Ahhhhhh

So shinyyyyy

Lol. This is our new center. We are incredibly lucky and have generous parents that donated to our Donor's Choose to help us get 12 new iPads! I am using one as the "home base" and a back up, but the other 11 are out for the students to use. They are set up in one corner of the library, using an old big book shelf (with convenient sliding shelves) to house them.

I labeled each with a number and printed out the exact same thing for the students to choose a number and then know which iPad to use. AND I made 3 sets (only 2 are out right now), so if 2 students pick the same number, guess what?? You are partners (and I could make it up to groups of 3 if we want to do something as a whole class)!

I showed the students where everything was and had one student be my partner and we walked through how to use the center. Then I had 2 students volunteer to be partners. The iPad numbers I used (free!).

-=genius idea=-...I chose by asking 2 questions - 1. What is a call number and why do we have them? 2. What does checkout mean? -=I was being observed this particular day and I got 3 distinguished in managing student behavior and my administrator even told me that they had never given 3 distinguished in this category before so woot!=-

Anyways, I had the 2 students show what to do, including what to do when the chime rings (more about that in a moment...). Basically, I want the students to press the home button and the power button at the end of the center. The home button to stop the app. The power button to put the iPad off and save the battery.



Now, back to the chime...After spending a lot of time training the kids to go to the centers, I wanted to save some time in the transitions. Instead of having them come back to their table, I now have a PowerPoint Presentation that runs and makes a "chime" sound when it changes. The students know to stop, clean up, look at the board and see what the new center is and switch on their own. This frees me up to help students find books, checkout, work on different centers (like the new iPad center where I could physically be there to help them the first few times and actually talk to them!).

If you would like the PPT, please find it here!













This PPT includes the following centers on an 8 minute transition time: iPad Brainpop Jr., Type Rocket Jr. and Checkout.





Once you start it, you press forward once to get to the "Beginning" slide, these are the first 3 centers. Then it will automatically forward every 8 minutes to the "Middle", "End" and "Time's Up" slides.









The clean up slide really helps me, as I don't have to constantly remind kids to put away their materials!











Then I put up the Library Jobs PDF and either have a student assign the jobs or assign them myself (depending on time/need). I also added 2 new jobs - iPad Organizer and Clean up iPad papers. Get the new Library Jobs with iPads PDF for free!

Thanks for reading! Please share how your centers are going in the comments or by email! I would love to hear how it's going and would love to hear your wonderful ideas also! Thank you for your support!

Keep reading!
Ms. Dhruv

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